Preamble

The House met at half-past
Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BRIGHTON CORPORATION BILL

HOVE CORPORATION BILL

Lords Amendments considered and agreed to.

LIVERPOOL CORPORATION (GENERAL POWERS) BILL [Lords]

Read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

Oral Answers to Questions — COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

The Maldives (Diplomatic Representation)

Mr. Blaker: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs what plans Her Majesty's Government have for establishing resident British diplomatic representation at Male.

The Minister of State, Commonwealth Affairs (Mrs. Judith Hart): None, Sir.

Mr. Blaker: In view of the existence of the air staging post on Gan Island, is it not likely that questions will arise between the British Government and the Maldivian Government which could be more effectively dealt with by a resident representative rather than, as at present, by a representative 300 miles away in Ceylon?

Mrs. Hart: We are finding that all questions can be perfectly well dealt with through the Maldivian Ambassador in Colombo. It is a perfectly normal practice that there should not be a resident representative there, indeed the only one in Male is the representative of the Formosan Government.

European Economic Community

Mr. Winnick: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs what consultations are taking place with Commonwealth countries in view of Great Britain's proposal to join the European Economic Community.

Mr. Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs when he intends to visit the Commonwealth countries mainly concerned about the possibility of Great Britain's entry into the European Economic Community, particularly New Zealand.

Mr. Shinwell: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs what conversations he has had recently with the Governments of India, Canada, Australia and New Zealand on the effect on their trade with the United Kingdom in the event of British entry into the European Economic Community.

The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Herbert Bowden): As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear in his statement on 10th November, we intend to maintain the closest consultation with Commonwealth Governments throughout. I am hoping to visit a number of Commonwealth countries in the ordinary course next year, and I will, naturally, take the opportunity of discussing this and other matters with Ministers in the countries that I visit.

Mr. Winnick: Would the Commonwealth Secretary not agree that it is most important that the Commonwealth countries should not be left high and dry, as they were when Common Market negotiations last took place? Could the Commonwealth Secretary tell the House what has been the reaction, particularly of Australia and New Zealand, to our present desire to join the European Economic Community?

Mr. Bowden: I can assure my hon. Friend that there is no intention of leaving the Commonwealth countries high and dry. At this probing stage with the E.F.T.A. countries, it is too soon to give any real information to Commonwealth countries. We are well aware of their interest, and we will keep in touch with them throughout.

Mr. Fisher: Does the right hon. Gentleman not feel that he should have special discussions with the Commonwealth Governments mainly concerned, particularly New Zealand, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys) did when he was Secretary of State for a comparable period? Should not these talks be a complementary exercise to those which his colleagues are now undertaking with European Governments?

Mr. Bowden: This may well be the position a little later on, when the probing talks with the E.F.T.A. countries have taken place. It is a little too soon at this stage. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Commonwealth countries are being kept in touch throughout.

Mr. Shinwell: Surely my right hon. Friend will realise that it is quite impossible for his colleagues to engage in conversations with people on the Continent, Foreign Ministers and the like, on the subject of entry into the Common Market without knowing, precisely and explicitly, what the older Commonwealth countries have to say about the effect of Britain's entry into the E.E.C. on their trading relations? Surely this is very important? Does my right hon. Friend understand that some of us think that we have been left in the dark about this matter and that we do not like it?

Mr. Bowden: As to the last point, there is very little that can yet be said. I can assure my right hon. Friend that when we can firmly say something to the Commonwealth countries we will certainly do so. At this stage, this is a purely probing exercise. If later on, next year, detailed consultations are necessary, we shall conduct them.

Sir R. Cary: Surely at the end of the probing exercise it will be necessary to have direct consultations between the Commonwealth Prime Ministers?

Mr. Bowden: Yes, we are very well aware of that.

Rhodesia

Mr. Newens: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs if he is aware that the new coins issued by the

illegal Rhodesian Government of Ian Smith to commemorate the unilateral declaration of independence are on public display at Rhodesia House; and if he will make a statement on the status and authority of the Smith régime at Rhodesia House.

Mr. Bowden: Yes. The residual staff at Rhodesia House have been allowed to remain in order to look after the interests of Rhodesian citizens in this country.

Mr. Newens: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the apparent toleration of a base in this country for the dissemination of propaganda and the display of emblems or any other activities on behalf of the Smith régime ought to be brought to a speedy end?

Mr. Bowden: I think that it should be clearly understood that the residual Rhodesian staff are in no sense the diplomatic representatives of the illegal régime. As my hon. Friend is probably aware, we have a residual mission in Salisbury, catering for British citizens there.

Dr. John Dunwoody: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement regarding sanctions against Rhodesia.

Mr. Bowden: Hon. Members will be aware that, since my statement in the House on 7th December, Her Majesty's Government have tabled a resolution in the Security Council calling for selective mandatory economic sanctions against Rhodesia.

Dr. Dunwoody: I welcome my right hon. Friend's statement, but would he not agree that, if sanctions are to be effective, they must be as wide as possible and that ineffective sanctions damage our economy while not contributing at all to the solution of the Rhodesian problem?

Mr. Bowden: This position was covered very thoroughly in the debate last week. The important thing is that the sanctions, of course, should be effective. This is in our minds at present when the discussions are going on in New York.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Would the right hon. Gentleman say how oil can be prevented from reaching Rhodesia? Will the Government be sincere and tell the House


exactly what will happen, instead of hedging, saying that this or that matter is being considered, at the United Nations?

Mr. Bowden: The position was made clear last week. If an appropriate amendment is tabled to our Resolution on selective mandatory sanctions which will give us what we believe to be essential in regard to oil, we would accept it.

Mr. E. L. Mallalieu: Can my right hon. Friend help us in this? If a good offer, which was thought to have possibilities, came from the Smith régime, what would be the attitude of Her Majesty's Government towards it? Would they feel inhibited in doing anything about it?

Mr. Bowden: The Question dealt with selective mandatory sanctions and the position at the moment in the United Nations. Anything else in this respect is hypothetical at the moment.

Mr. King: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that, as in the statement of the Government themselves Rhodesia is not a sovereign State, what is taking place in the United Nations is illegal? Alternatively, would he accept that if there is one illegal authority in Salisbury, it is a melancholy fact that the British Government are engaging in illegal activities in New York?

Mr. Bowden: I accept, of course, that there is an illegal Government in Rhodesia, but it is for the United Nations to decide whether any action which it takes is illegal or not.

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a further statement on the Rhodesian situation.

Mr. Bowden: I have nothing to add to the speech I made in the House of Commons on 7th December and to the words of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 5th and 8th December.

Mr. Wall: Has the right hon. Gentleman received any further communications from Salisbury? Would he agree that now the Government have been forced to include oil in their mandatory sanctions they are already losing control at the United Nations?

Mr. Bowden: On the second point, I do not accept that we have been forced to accept oil. It was made clear that we would accept an amendment if it was in the right terms. On the first part, we have received no representations from the illegal régime. We have been in touch, of course, with Her Majesty's Governor.

Mr. Orme: I thank my right hon. Friend for that statement, but would he tell the House when he expects the United Nations Resolution to be passed and implemented?

Mr. Bowden: It is difficult to forecast exactly the number of days, but I think within a very few days now.

Mr. David Steel: Would the right hon. Gentleman make it plain that the British Government do not regard the use of the veto in the Security Council as likely as, apparently, do some hon. Members of the Official Opposition?

Mr. Bowden: I think that we should await developments.

Mr. Wood: Is it not now the position that there will be no independence granted to Rhodesia before majority rule? If that is the case, is it the Government's intention to introduce majority rule as soon as possible?

Mr. Bowden: It was made clear in the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Communiqué, paragraph 10(a) and (b), that if the selective mandatory sanctions Resolution goes through and is supported by our Commonwealth colleagues the rest will follow.

Mr. James Johnston: Following the talks on the gunboat "Tiger", when the Secretary of State came face to face for the second time with Mr. Smith, does he accept that Mr. Smith is a pawn in the hands of people in Salisbury? Does he think that, whatever acceptance Mr. Smith may make of any terms we suggest to him, people like Boss Lilford and Colonel Knox will negative this, veto Mr. Smith and put someone else in his place?

Mr. Bowden: This is a matter for my hon. Friend himself to decide, in his own view, the reason for the actions which Mr. Smith has taken. We probably all have our own views.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: The right hon. Gentleman said in answer to an earlier supplementary question that he expected implementation in a few days. Does not implementation involve domestic legislation to enforce these measures by the various member countries? Is that not likely to be a lengthy and, indeed, uncharted course?

Mr. Bowden: Some countries need domestic legislation to implement the decisions of the United Nations; I do not think that this is true in all cases.

Mr. Rose: With regard to the supply of oil to Rhodesia from Portuguese Africa, would my right hon. Friend not take diplomatic action about the oil companies at present supplying this oil?

Mr. Bowden: My hon. Friend should await the outcome of the Resolution now before the United Nations.

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs if he is aware that British-made military equipment is being sold to the illegal régime in Rhodesia by Australia; and what action he proposes to take in the matter.

Mr. Bowden: No military equipment, British-made or other, has been or is being sold to the illegal régime by Australia or, as far as I am aware, from any source in Australia.

Mr. Hamilton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that that Answer will give considerable gratification at least to us on this side? Has my right hon. Friend sought assurances on this point from the Australian Government and the United States Government, because the information which has reached me is that that equipment is going to Rhodesia?

Mr. Bowden: I am aware of these rumours, which have been investigated. We have been in close touch with the Australian Government, and I can assure my hon. Friend that there is nothing in the rumour.

Mr. Evelyn King: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs under what regulation Mrs. R. M. Y. Dawson, of Umtali, Rhodesia, is being deprived of moneys bequeathed to her by

her uncle in 1939; and how long he proposes she shall be thus deprived.

Mrs. Hart: Under the Exchange Control Act, 1947, all payments to non-residents require the permission of the Treasury. Such permission is not given in respect of income due to residents of Rhodesia from trusts and Settlements in this country. This income must be withheld and is not available to the beneficiary. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made clear, this restriction along with the other measures we have taken against Rhodesia will be lifted as soon as there has been a return to constitutional government.

Mr. King: Apart from the inhumanity of depriving an elderly lady, with no responsibility for these matters, of her income, would the hon. Lady not also accept that the experience of the last 12 months has shown that all that will happen is that Mr. Smith will be provided with another supporter?

Mrs. Hart: The hon. Gentleman will know that, in cases of genuine hardship, the Treasury and the Bank of England are prepared to make exceptions. The trouble in this case is that no genuine hardship has yet been established. As to the hon. Gentleman's conclusions, I cannot agree.

Sir Knox Cunningham: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs what steps he is taking to maintain contact with the authorities in Rhodesia; and whether he has any new plan for the solution of the present constitutional difficulties.

Mr. Bowden: As the House will know, the Governor, Sir Humphrey Gibbs, is in Salisbury and if there are people in Rhodesia who wish to make their views known to the British Government, they know how this can be done. As to the second part of the Question, I have nothing to add to what was said by Her Majesty's Government in the debate last week.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Will the right hon. Gentleman not shut the door to negotiations? Having got so far towards a settlement, will he now make one further effort on the basis of the agreed constitution?

Mr. Bowden: I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the "Tiger" agreement was accepted by Her Majesty's Government. We did not shut the door.

Mr. Orme: Would my right hon. Friend bear in mind that any constitutional settlement arrived at in Rhodesia would be superior to the one that has been achieved in Northern Ireland?

Captain Orr: What advice, if any, have Her Majesty's Government been giving to officers and other ranks of the Forces of the Crown in Rhodesia?

Mr. Bowden: I would like notice of that question. In any case, I think that the position hardly arises; at least, there is no difference in the position at present.

Secretary of State (Visits)

Mr. Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs when he intends to visit any Commonwealth countries.

Mr. Bowden: I am particularly anxious to visit as many Commonwealth countries as possible. I certainly hope to visit a number during the coming year, but I have no firm plans at the moment, except for a visit to Malta some time after Christmas.

Mr. Fisher: Because of the right hon. Gentleman's priority preoccupation with Rhodesia, which I fully understand, of course, he has not yet had an opportunity to visit any other country. As comprehensive a tour as possible of the member countries concerned is long overdue. Could this be arranged soon, possibly even some time during the Christmas Recess?

Mr. Bowden: I have already said that I am going to Malta during the Christmas Recess. There is some urgency about this. We are working out plans for visits in the New Year.

Zambia

Mr. Evelyn King: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs on what date he received from the Zambian Government an expression of gratitude in respect of the 3½ million gallons of fuel taken into Zambia by the Royal Air Force.

Mrs. Hart: 29th October.

Mr. King: Is it not a fact that the official Zambian spokesman said that R.A.F. planes have brought in relatively little fuel at great expense? Would she accept that?

Mrs. Hart: On 29th October, we had a communication from the High Commission in Lusaka, from the appropriate Ministry in Zambia, saying:
The Ministry request the High Commission to express the gratitude of the Government of the Republic of Zambia to the Government of the United Kingdom for the support given in connection with P.O.L. supplies through this period.

Mr. Hamilton: Would my hon. Friend give an assurance that if a request for a further airlift came from Zambia the Government would accede to it?

Mrs. Hart: I think my hon. Friend will know that the offer of £13·85 million, which at present is still being considered by the Republic of Zambia, would include, should it be needed, money to support a further airlift.

Mr. Wall: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the effect of the Rhodesian unilateral declaration of independence on Zambia and in so far as it affects the degree of assistance afforded by Great Britain to Zambia.

Mrs. Hart: Until last year Zambia depended directly on Rhodesia for about a third of her imports, while routes through Rhodesia carried over 90 per cent. of her import and export trade. The illegal declaration of independence therefore posed special problems for the Zambian economy. In these circumstances Her Majesty's Government have made substantial contingency assistance available to Zambia to enable her to develop alternative routes and sources of supply and to participate in sanctions against Rhodesia. Details of this assistance were given in my reply to the hon. Member for Woolwich, West (Mr. Hamling) on 24th November—[Vol. 736, c. 353]—to which I have nothing to add.

Mr. Wall: Is it not correct that Zambians refer to aid as "compensation" for the act of U.D.I.? Is it not a fact that this demand for aid or compensation will increase under mandatory sanctions? What is the final bill likely to be?

Mrs. Hart: I have always been very careful in the House to use not the word "aid" but the word "assistance", which is the correct one in this regard. Her Majesty's Government are concerned about Zambia's non-racial society, about the effectiveness of sanctions to end the illegal régime, about the 44,000 British nationals in Zambia and about supplies of copper to this country.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs what communication he has received from the President of Zambia about the modification of the Barotseland Agreement 1964.

Sir Knox Cunningham: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs what official representation the President of Zambia has made to him concerning the amendment of the Barotseland Agreement of 1964.

Mrs. Hart: None, Sir.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is this not very strange, since President Kaunda undertook at Lancaster House to reconfirm, after independence, this agreement which was confirmed in the Independence Act? Since the Barotse National Council has now been dissolved without the consent of that Council or the Litunga, is not the honour of Her Majesty's Government —bearing in mind the signature of the Secretary of State's predecessor on the agreement—involved, as well as that of President Kaunda?

Mrs. Hart: No, I could not agree with the hon. Gentleman. All is now perfectly calm in Barotseland. Since Zambia became independent, these matters have become essentially the internal affairs of a sovereign State.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Did not President Kaunda undertake, on Zambia's becoming independent, to reconfirm the independence of Barotseland? Instead, has he not made it a local Government province of Zambia? And are these the people who talk about moral principles in Rhodesia?

Mrs. Hart: There are clearly many views on the kind and nature of moral principles involved in these issues at present. However, on this particular matter, it is clear that once a country

becomes independent these matters become issues for its own internal decision.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: On a point of order. In view of the cynically unsatisfactory nature—

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is no need for the hon. Member to add words to the conventional phraseology.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Further to that point of order. In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the Minister's reply, I beg to give notice that I shall seek to raise this matter on the Adjournment at the earliest possible opportunity.

India (Hyderabad Reading Room)

Dr. Gray: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs why the British Council has not provided a reading room for the city of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India, in view of its size and importance.

Mrs. Hart: The British Council already has four libraries and seven branch libraries operating in India. It will continue to keep the strong claims of Hyderabad in mind when further funds are available.

Dr. Gray: I welcome that reply. Is my hon. Friend aware that not only the Americans but the French and the Germans have reading rooms in Hyderabad, that English is the lingua franca of South India, that Hyderabad has a population of 2 million and, as she has stressed, its claim for a reading room is extremely strong?

Mrs. Hart: I am aware of this. There are already three towns in this part of South India where British Council libraries are operating. We will consider this very sympathetically as soon as we can.

Kenya Settlers' Compassionate Fund Trust

Sir D. Walker-Smith: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs whether he has now completed his consideration of the report from the High Commission regarding the future of the Kenya Settlers' Compassionate Fund Trust; and whether he will make a statement.

Mrs. Hart: It has been found necessary to refer some details on the future of the fund trust to the trustees in Nairobi. We have made an offer that it should continue on a revolving basis within the overall limit of £300,000 for a further period.

Sir D. Walker-Smith: I welcome the last part of what the hon. Lady said. May we take it, then, that the door is not closed to the possibility of a continuance of this fund, if necessary, by a further contribution from Her Majesty's Government, if there are still deserving cases outstanding which cannot be met out of the revolving element?

Mrs. Hart: I should make it clear that the initial capital was supplied to the fund on a once-for-all basis, but, within that context, we are concerned to work out a solution which will provide something more for the deserving cases who remain in Kenya, and to assist those who return home.

Oral Answers to Questions — GIBRALTAR

La Linea Frontier

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will make a statement on the latest position on the frontier point between Gibraltar and Spain at La Linea.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Frederick Lee): There has been no further change in the situation at the frontier since the Spanish authorities downgraded the La Linea customs post on 25th October.

Mr. Digby: Would it be right to assume that no news is good news? Is it just as easy for Spanish subjects to cross the frontier to work in Gibraltar as it was, or is that getting more difficult?

Mr. Lee: Spanish people are still crossing into Gibraltar. The Governor, Chief Minister and his Deputy are in London, at my invitation, discussing the present position.

Mr. Wood: When does the right hon. Gentleman expect a reply from the Spanish Government on this and other points which have been referred to the International Court of Justice?

Mr. Lee: The position is that we are still awaiting a reply from the Spanish Government. Up to now they have not given a reply to our suggestion that the matter go to the International Court.

Oral Answers to Questions — MAURITIUS

Diego Garcia Base

Mr. James Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies when Her Majesty's Government are to begin paying the Mauritius Government for the future use of the proposed base upon the island of Diego Garcia; and whether any terms are attached.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. John Stonehouse): The agreed compensation of £3 million for the transfer of the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia to the British Indian Ocean Territory, for possible defence use, was paid in full to Mauritius last March. No conditions were made as to the uses to which the money should be put.

Mr. Johnson: Is my hon. Friend aware that his firm and clear Answer will give satisfaction in Mauritius? Is he aware that a smear campaign is being waged by the opposition party in Mauritius, which is semi-fascist, against the Coalition Labour Government? Will he give a guarantee on this matter and instruct the Acting Governor to take action against these hooligans who are disrupting public meetings in the island?

Mr. Stonehouse: That is another question. I hope that my original Answer will help to allay any anxiety that may exist in Mauritius.

Mr. Kershaw: If money has been paid for Diego Garcia, why did the Secretary of State for Defence say to me the other day that no costs have been incurred in respect of this absolutely useless island?

Mr. Stonehouse: That question should be addressed to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence.

Oral Answers to Questions — COLONIAL TERRITORIES

Far East (Secretary of State's Visit)

Mr. Arthur Lewis: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies whether he will make a statement on his most recent


visit to the Far East, giving details of who accompanied him, the countries visited, the total costs involved, the period of the visit and dates; why this visit was made; and why the activities which he has now carried out could not have been carried out during the period of 29th July to 3rd September, 1966, when he was last on a visit to these countries.

Mr. Frederick Lee: I visited Hong Kong from 29th November to 6th December, accompanied by three officials from my own Department and a representative each from the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence. The total costs were £3,860 approximately. I went to conclude discussions on the Hong Kong defence contribution which were started on my earlier visit. We reached an understanding, and I will make a statement as soon as possible.

Mr. Lewis: Could my right hon. Friend explain why on his previous visit the cost was £6,000 when he had fewer officials with him, whereas his last visit cost about £1,500 for himself? Will he say how much was expended on himself and how much on the officials? Did he need all those officials?

Mr. Lee: If my hon. Friend, who has a thirst for knowledge on these matters, will put down a Question to that effect, I will try to answer it.

Mr. Rankin: Is it a fact that the purpose of my right hon. Friend's visit to Hong Kong was to get the Governor to maintain an army there which he does not want to have in order to maintain in Hong Kong conditions about which we are rightly protesting in Rhodesia?

Mr. Lee: No, Sir.

Mr. Wood: While not wishing to interfere in this domestic controversy, would the right hon. Gentleman say when he will be able to make his rather more important statement on Hong Kong?

Mr. Lee: I am hoping to do so before the House rises for the Christmas Recess. There is some doubt, but I will try hard to make my statement before then.

Mr. Royle: Why has it taken the right hon. Gentleman so long to make his statement? Is he aware that some of my hon. Friends and I had Questions to him on this issue but have delayed

them until next Tuesday? Is he saying that he will be unable to make this important statement next Tuesday?

Mr. Lee: I did not say that I would not be able to make it. I said that I would try very hard indeed to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF POWER

North Sea Gas

Mr. James Johnson: asked the Minister of Power if he will state the estimated value of output of North Sea gas in 1970 expressed in units of tons of coal, and as a percentage of our fuel needs in that year.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Power (Dr. Jeremy Bray): No precise estimates are possible, but I expect that output of North Sea gas in 1970 will average at least 1,000 million cubic feet a day. This is equivalent in heat value to about 13 million tons of coal a year, and would represent under 5 per cent. of our total estimated energy requirements in 1970.

Mr. Johnson: Is my hon. Friend aware that the public look upon these massive gas supplies for the future as a national asset, just as they looked upon coal in the past? Will he take steps to prevent international oil companies from holding up supplies by demanding as much as 4d. a therm from the Gas Council?

Dr. Bray: There is no question of anyone holding up supplies. The price is a matter for negotiation between the Gas Council and the North Sea operators.

Mr. Barber: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that the delay in settling the price is now beginning to hold back this development, and is not this a serious matter?

Dr. Bray: No, Sir. There are no grounds whatever for that statement.

Mr. Brian Parkyn: Will my hon. Friend assure the House that if these volumes of gas are produced by 1970 there will be no undue protection of the coal industry?

Dr. Bray: The whole question of the use of North Sea gas and the Government's policy in relation to other fuel industries is being examined by my right


hon. Friend in the Fuel Policy Review, the conclusions of which should be available in the early part of next year.

Mr. Bob Brown: Will my hon. Friend consider taking powers for the establishment of factories in the development areas to allow the gas boards to produce conversion kits, many of which will be required?

Dr. Bray: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion. I assure him that we will look into what can be done in that respect.

Captain W. Elliot: Would the hon. Gentleman not agree that an enormous amount of capital is necessary to develop these resources in the North Sea? Will he give an undertaking that the Government will neither do nor say anything which might upset the confidence of the great companies which are putting such large amounts of money into this development?

Dr. Bray: The Government have done nothing and have said nothing to upset anyone's confidence in this respect.

CURRENT RESEARCH CONTRACTS WITH UNIVERSITIES OR COLLEGES OF TECHNOLOGY


Title
University or College of Technology
Period of Contract
Value





£


Fundamental study into Gaseous Exchange Processes relating to Safety of Nuclear Reactors.
University of Sheffield
1st July, 1965–31st December, 1966
1,000


Mechanism of Heat Transfer bearing on Safety for Material Testing reactor type nuclear fuel elements.
University of Manchester
1st September, 1966– 29th February, 1968
1,000


Research on the stress distribution in haulage components under static and impact loading conditions.
University of Sheffield
1st September, 1964– 31st August, 1967
6,985


Research on deformation of sedimentary rocks under strata pressures.
University of Sheffield
1st April, 1965–31st March, 1968
4,800


Research on the initiation and propagation of fracture in non-metallic solids.
University of Cambridge
1st January, 1965–31st December, 1967
4,500


Study of simulation of risk for operational research purposes.
Royal College of Advanced Technology, Salford.
1st January, 1966–31st March, 1968
250


Study of the entrainment of jets for purposes of research on flameproof en closures
Imperial College of Science and Technology 
1st July, 1966–30th June, 1971
16,750


Research on precipitation and strengthening in mild steel by small additions of carbide forming elements.
University of Sheffield
1st October, 1965–30th September, 1968
2,655


Study of methane oxidation over heterogeneous catalysts for the purposes of developing improved methane monitoring systems.
Imperial College of Science and Technology.
1st October, 1966–30th September, 1969
6,215


Study of probabilistic models for the analysis of mining accidents and health statistics.
University of Sheffield
1st October, 1966–30th September, 1969
9,000

Research Contracts (Universities)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Minister of Power if he will give details of any contracts for research which his Department has placed with universities or colleges of advanced technology, and of the value of such contracts.

Dr. Bray: The number of current contracts is 10, with a total value of about £53,000 over the periods of the contracts, which vary from one and a half to five years. With permission, I will circulate the details in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Mr. Dalyell: Am I right in assuming that this is basically "safety in mines" cost and does it include the contracts of the nationalised industries?

Dr. Bray: The details of the contracts will be given in the OFFICIAL REPORT. They do not include contracts placed by the nationalised industries, which last year alone totalled 138, with a total expenditure of about £250,000.

Following are the details:

Steel Industry

Mr. Hooley: asked the Minister of Power what is the estimated total capacity of the steel industry in 1967; and what percentage of this capacity is likely to be fully employed.

Dr. Bray: Thirty-one million tons. The Iron and Steel Board estimate that not much more than 70 per cent. of capacity will be employed, on average, in 1967.

Mr. Hooley: Would my hon. Friend agree that it is essential for the economic health of this country that the steel industry should work at a much higher capacity than it is likely to do in 1967, and will he make this point clear to the Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Dr. Bray: As my hon. Friend knows, it is highly desirable that all our industries should work as near to full capacity as possible. However, the deficient home demand for steel is now being aggravated by a recession in stock holding and also by a high level of imports. My right hon. Friend is looking into both of these matters.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: How much of this 30 per cent, unused capacity in the steel industry is due to the credit squeeze and the actions of the Government during the summer?

Dr. Bray: I clearly could not give an answer to that question without notice. A substantial proportion of this 30 per cent. is in respect of ageing and, perhaps, obsolete capacity, which might well not be considered within the total of 100 per cent.

Mr. Barber: How does the 30 per cent. unused capacity compare with what was suggested in the National Plan?

Dr. Bray: The National Plan related to 1970 and contained no information about 1967.

Mr. David Griffiths: Would my hon. Friend make it clear that the credit squeeze is not unduly responsible for this state of affairs? Is he further aware that the right hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale (Mr. Barber) knows full well that the steel industry was working at only 65 per cent. to 70 per cent.—at

the most at 75 per cent. at any time—of capacity in Sheffield and Rotherham?

Dr. Bray: As my hon. Friend points out, the history of the steel industry has been one of cycles of production which the present Government are doing a great deal to remove upstairs in Committee.

Scottish Gas Board (Coupon Account Books)

Mr. Doig: asked the Minister of Power if he is aware that the Scottish Gas Board is now charging 1s. 6d. per month to customers paying their accounts by coupon book, although no such charge is made to those paying by banker's order; and if he will issue a general direction to the Board to remove this charge.

Dr. Bray: My right hon. Friend is aware of the charge which is a matter for the Board. A general direction would not be appropriate.

Mr. Doig: Is my hon. Friend aware that this charge falls on those least able to bear it, namely, those who cannot afford to have bank accounts? If the Board wants to raise extra revenue, this is a most unfair way to do it.

Dr. Bray: As my hon. Friend knows, there is a number of payment systems to assist precisely the kind of person he has in mind to make it easier for him to pay his accounts. Whenever anybody accepts this method of payment, or payment by pre-payment meter, or anything like this, he is fully aware that the cost of collection is greater and therefore the charge is greater. But it is still more convenient for people and they choose to do it in this way.

Mr. Edward M. Taylor: As the scheme is designed specifically for poor people with limited means to pay for gas in Scotland, the cost of which is about 15 per cent. above the cost in the rest of the country, is it not outrageous to ask these people to pay about £1 a year extra for the privilege of paying their bills monthly in advance?

Dr. Bray: No. It is a matter of free choice on the part of individuals concerned. They are well able to choose between the different methods of payment, such as the coupon method. It is


the Government's policy to make sure that the charges of the nationalised industries are related to the costs incurred in giving these services.

COAL

Retail Distribution

Mr. Eadie: asked the Minister of Power (1) what response he has received from coal merchants as a result of his drawing to their attention the report on retail coal distribution costs;
(2) what co-operation he has had as a result of his approach to the interests concerned on the question of reorganisation in the coal distribution trade.

Dr. Bray: We are awaiting the views of the trade on reorganisation, but I am assured that they are making good progress in their necessarily detailed consideration of the Board's recommendations. Inquiries suggest a generally encouraging response to my right hon. Friend's request to the trade to contain prices.

Mr. Eadie: Is my hon. Friend aware that the National Coal Board is responsible for about 3 per cent. to 4 per cent. of the retail trade in this country, that the co-ops are responsible for about 14 per cent. and that the rest is made up of about 12,000 private traders? Will he not consider these facts and, as I have questioned him on this matter before, will he not rouse himself from his slumber and do something in the interests of the consumer?

Dr. Bray: I think my hon. Friend is very well aware that we are not getting much slumber nowadays. The question of the organisation of the distributive industry is being actively discussed in the different regions and considerable thought is being given to it within the trade. My Department is in consultation with the trade on this matter.

Mr. Lubbock: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there is widespread contravention of the Government's policy on prices and incomes by the solid fuel merchants, various cases of which I have drawn to his attention? Will he announce to the merchants that if they do not fall in line with the Government's policy an

Order will be introduced under the Prices and Incomes Act?

Dr. Bray: No, Sir. I am not aware that there is widespread infringement. We are dealing with every inquiry that we get. In the overwhelming majority of cases, we are finding that the trade is observing the prices and incomes policy.

Mr. David Griffiths: Will my hon. Friend see that action is taken, rather than this matter merely being seriously looked into? Is he aware that these distributors and coal merchants are taking the bulk of profits that should be going to the National Coal Board?

Dr. Bray: As my hon. Friend will know from reading the Report of the Prices and Incomes Board, the main source of economies lies in the concentration of the overhead expenditure of the distributors. It is by the amalgamation and rationalisation of the distributors who carry on business throughout an area that the principal economies can probably be made.

TECHNOLOGY

Shipbuilding Firms (Mergers)

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the Minister of Technology what is the latest progress made in mergers between shipbuilding firms, as recommended by the Geddes Report.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Technology (Mr. Peter Shore): The timetable in the Geddes Report envisages that expert studies should take place in the first half of 1967 and that groupings should be formed about the third quarter of next year. I understand that a number of companies are making useful progress to this end.

Mr. Digby: To facilitate these mergers, is it not necessary for the Government to speed up their own part in the Geddes proposals, particularly in view of what could be regarded as a deteriorating situation, with orders not coming in as fast as we should like?

Mr. Shore: I appreciate the need for speed in the measures required to help the shipbuilding industry, but so far the Government have, I think, kept pretty


rigorously to the timetable laid down in the Geddes Report.

Mr. Shinwell: In view of the vital importance of the shipbuilding industry in the national economy, would my hon. Friend ask his right hon. Friend to ask the Leader of the House whether it would be possible to have a debate on shipbuilding immediately after we return from the Christmas Recess?

Mr. Shore: I am sure that that suggestion has been heard by my right hon. Friend and will be passed on to his right hon. Friend, but we are hoping that not just a debate but the legislation will not be long delayed when we resume after the Christmas Recess.

Mr. David Price: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many private negotiations are taking place towards the Geddes end of mergers? Is he also aware that it is emerging that the Geddes pattern of mergers is not necessarily the last answer and that some of the smaller companies are proving to be financially sounder than some of the large companies? The merger pattern may well be different from that so precisely proposed by Geddes.

Mr. Shore: I am aware that certain mergers of a rather smaller kind than those envisaged in the Geddes Report have taken place and, indeed, are being considered. But I think that it would be right to wait until the Shipbuilding Industry Board has had time to consider various proposals before drawing any conclusions.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Can my hon. Friend say when the new financial proposals for assistance towards mergers can be announced as recommended in the Geddes Report?

Mr. Shore: As I have said, we are hoping to bring before the House soon after the recess the legislation which will enable the Shipbuilding Industry Board to be established on a statutory basis and then to make loans and grants available to the new groups.

Imperial Typewriter Company

Mr. Farr: asked the Minister of Technology what consultations he has had in relation to the recent take-over bid for the Imperial Typewriter Company.

Mr. Shore: The Ministry of Technology was fully consulted by the Treasury and by the Board of Trade on the proposal for the merger of the Imperial Typewriter Company Limited with the Royal Typewriter Company Incorporated —a division of Litton Industries Incorporated.

Mr. Farr: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that Answer, but would he tell me whether he recommended to his Minister that this merger should not go ahead inasmuch as the Imperial Typewriter Co. was the only fully independent British manufacturer of typewriters in the United Kingdom?

Mr. Shore: We looked at this matter very carefully when it came before us and we had to recognise the deplorable fact that less than 20 per cent. of the British typewriter industry, when the Labour Government assumed office, remained in British control and ownership and that that section of the industry was already substantially undermined and was not seriously competitive with its rivals.

EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

Mr. Henig: asked the Prime Minister what official contacts the British Government have had with the Commission of the European Economic Community during the last three months; and whether he will seek to hold talks with this Commission as well as with the member Governments of the European Economic Community.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): Diplomatic contact through the United Kingdom delegation, and also, at Ministerial level, through the quarterly ministerial meeting of the Council of Western European Union on 30th September. I hope to meet representatives of the Commission at some stage in the forthcoming discussions.

Mr. Henig: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the event of formal negotiations for British accession to the E.E.C. the attitude of the Commission will be very important indeed on many important technical matters? Would he therefore ensure that Her Majesty's Government do not give any reason to suppose that they


share the attitude of the French Government on the future rôle of the Commission and the revision of the Community institutions?

The Prime Minister: I am well aware of the importance of the Commission on a continuing basis, particularly if the negotiations are involved, but we have not yet got to the stage of negotiations. However, as I have said, we have continuing diplomatic contact, and also, I hope that there will be a meeting at some stage in the visits to the Heads of Government.

Mr. Ridley: asked the Prime Minister if he will place in the Library a copy of his calculations leading up to his estimate that it will cost £175 million to £250 million in foreign exchange to implement the agricultural policy of the Common Market.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. I do not think it would help any future negotiations to go further than I have already in describing the basis of this calculation.

Mr. Ridley: Is the Prime Minister aware that this whole financial regulation will have to be renegotiated in 1970 and that he should be able to make a very much better bargain than the £175 to £250 million which he has estimated? Surely it would be for the convenience of the House if he were to give the basis of his calculations so that hon. Members may check and comment on them.

The Prime Minister: Hon. Members are perfectly free to check. I strongly qualified these figures by what I said, that they are based on present prices and present world prices. I indicated that many experts think that world prices will rise and therefore narrow the gap. It is anyone's guess as to what will happen to the internal prices in the Common Market.

Mr. Godber: Would the Prime Minister agree that, whatever the figure may be, it can be largely mitigated by a real programme of agricultural expansion in this country and that this would be right whether we go into the Common Market or not? Would he therefore initiate such a policy?

The Prime Minister: This has always been a fact. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that there are two important

variables in these calculations. That is one, and the second relates to the prices which we have to pay internally for our imports from third countries and the Commission's prices.

Mr. Stodart: Would it not be very difficult for the Prime Minister to achieve an expansion of the nature suggested by my right hon. Friend in view of the well-known hostility to the Common Market negotiations of his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture?

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. I think that where there is hostility in the matter of agricultural policy it is to be found most among many of the farmers themselves. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I said, "many of the farmers themselves". The calculations which we have made have been to some extent queried by the National Farmers' Union in its own official pamphlet on this question. But certainly recent steps taken in agricultural policy are designed to secure a bigger expansion of home production here. I fully agree with the objective set out by the right hon. Gentleman, even though he never did very much to secure it.

Mr. John Hynd: Is my right hon. Friend aware that a representative of the Commission has stated that the amount of levy which might be required of this country would be no higher than that paid by Germany? Would not that make an enormous difference in favour of our balance of payments?

The Prime Minister: I am aware of these statements. They are all relevant. I do not think that any of them leads to the conclusion that I should publish all the details of these calculations which have been made against the background I have described. But it is a fact that one of the calculations we have to make relates to the higher cost of imports from the Community compared with imports from the Commonwealth and the very high levy figures which would be involved on food imports from third countries which would then go back across the exchanges into the Guidance and Guarantee Fund.

Mr. Turton: asked the Prime Minister if he will now invite to this country the Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand in order to discuss with them his projected tour of Western Europe.

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Prime Minister whether he will visit those members of the Commonwealth most likely to be affected by a British entry to the European Economic Community.

The Prime Minister: I would refer hon. Members to my Answers to Questions by the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten) on the 6th of December. [Vol. 737, c. 1148.]

Mr. Turton: Is the Prime Minister aware that, notwithstanding the statements he made in 1962, there is mounting suspicion in Australia and New Zealand that their interests may be betrayed during his tour of Europe? Will he, therefore, treat the Prime Ministers of these two countries no less well than the Prime Ministers of the E.F.T.A. countries, and have talks with them before his tour begins?

The Prime Minister: I stated on 6th December our plans about maintaining contact, and I am in close contact with the Prime Ministers of these countries. I do not accept the statement that there is among the Prime Ministers or the Governments of those countries the suspicion which the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned, and I assure him, in view of his touching reference to what I said in the past, that our concern for the Commonwealth will be better demonstrated than on past occasions.

Mr. William Hamilton: As there is a good deal of public interest in the need to preserve the interests of the Commonwealth, and certainly on this side we would support that, will my right hon. Friend consider convening at an early date a meeting of at least trade and finance Ministers of the Commonwealth, either in London or somewhere else in the Commonwealth, to debate the implications of Britain joining the E.C.C.?

The Prime Minister: I have dealt with this question. As I said then, at the right moment—and we have not reached that—it would be right to have discussions with the Prime Ministers of the countries principally concerned. By no means all the Commonwealth, in fact only a small proportion of the number of Commonwealth countries, is involved directly, and this will be done either by inviting them to London, or by visits by some of my right

hon. Friends to discuss this question with them.

Mr. Braine: Will the Prime Minister give the House an assurance that, at a time when Britain's impending entry into the Common Market may cause some strain on our Commonwealth relationships, he attaches the highest possible importance to the maintenance of the closest liaison on all matters at all times with our two sister British nations on the other side of the world?

The Prime Minister: I always have attached the highest priority to that, and will continue to do so, not least during this period when we are involved in these discussions.

Mr. Maclennan: Will my right hon. Friend take the earliest possible opportunity in the discussions, particularly with the New Zealand Prime Minister, to reconsider the New Zealand trade agreement, both to facilitate our entry into the Common Market and to reassure our agricultural industry, particularly the livestock section, that its future will not be hindered or hampered by this agreement.

The Prime Minister: I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House, whatever their other differences on Common Market questions, have always recognised the special case of New Zealand. I remember the speeches which we all made four years ago, and the very high dependence of New Zealand on the British market. I am sure that no one would wish to see New Zealand's position prejudiced in the negotiations, still less prejudiced in advance of them by any renegotiation of an agreement only just concluded.

"THE TIMES" (MONOPOLIES COMMISSION'S REPORT)

Mr. Winnick: asked the Prime Minister when the Monopolies Commission's Report on the future of The Times will be available.

The Prime Minister: I hope before the end of the year, Sir.

Mr. Winnick: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that there is a tremendous amount of public interest in this matter because of the financial crisis in


the newspaper world, including The Guardian? Has he any comment to make on this position?

The Prime Minister: With regard to the Monopolies Commission's Report, I know that the Commission is getting on with it as fast as it can, having regard to the importance of the remit which it has been given. We must await the Report before we can comment on the Commission's recommendations. On the wider question, I think that this was answered by my right hon. Friend the Lord President a few days ago. This is a matter which gives everyone in this House cause for very deep concern when one considers the present situation in which large parts of the Press are now finding themselves.

Mrs. Lena Jeger: Will my right hon. Friend try to arrange, through the usual channels, for a debate not only on the Report but on the wider question of newspaper economics in view of the widespread public anxiety, in which I believe I ought to declare a personal interest?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend's statement about the widespread public anxiety, and, after reading her article in The Guardian this morning, I should be very sorry to see it disappear for any reason, economic or otherwise. The question of a debate is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House.

Mr. Goodhew: Is the Prime Minister aware that the biggest danger to the freedom of the Press comes from statements by right hon. Gentlemen on the Front Bench opposite, including himself?

The Prime Minister: That is a total misconception. I know that hon. Gentlemen opposite, despite all that has happened since, have still not reconciled themselves to the rightness of the statement made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General. It was not an interference with the Press, but was justified by the requirements of the Tribunal. I am not aware of any other statement. I am aware of certain dangerous interventions in the past with the Press by Ministers before 1964, including the sacking of an editor because of what he wrote in his editorial.

WORLD PEACE

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: asked the Prime Minister if he will invite the Russian, United States, Chinese and French leaders to a summit conference to discuss planned disarmament and the threat to world peace in Europe and Asia.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir. I do not believe that a summit conference of this kind would, at the present time, be helpful, and we should not forget the legitimate interest which non-nuclear States also have in consultations affecting world peace.

Mr. Roberts: Would not the Prime Minister agree that the terrible war in Vietnam, and the mad armaments race which is impoverishing not only Britain but the rest of the world, are events of such importance that they require to be discussed by the leaders of all nations, and will he try to bring them together, irrespective of failure time and time again?

The Prime Minister: I agree that both those things are matters of such importance that it is our duty to try to solve these problems by any means open to us. I believe that the discussions, for example, which we have been having with the Soviet Union throughout this year, the recent visit of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, and the forthcoming visit of Mr. Kosygin, are more rightly directed to solving these problems than a summit conference of the kind mentioned by my hon. Friend.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: Before Mr. Kosygin comes, will the Prime Minister consider publishing the Government's master plan for disarmament which Lord Chalfont said was ready eighteen months ago?

The Prime Minister: What is much more relevant—[Laughter.]—I must say this to the proponent of secret diplomacy over these months—is the fact that we have communicated all our proposals for disarmament to the countries principally concerned, and that for the first time now we look within reasonable distance of a non-proliferation agreement as a result of the initiatives which we have taken and the fact that in the summer of


1965 we took a line of our own on this which is now becoming more widely followed.

Mr. Mendelson: With regard to that part of the Question which deals with Europe, will the Prime Minister consider sending a favourable response to the modified Polish proposal for a European Security Conference, a proposal by the Polish Government which, as my right hon. Friend knows, removes some of the difficulties concerning Eastern Europe?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir, but I think that our attitude to this is not confined to the Eastern German problem. We feel, and we have said this to the Soviet leaders a number of times this year, and I think they very well understand it, that at the right time an all-European security conference might be very useful. We have to iron out some of the problems first, which now I think are getting nearer a solution. That will be the right time to do it, otherwise there is a danger that a conference of this kind will become a propaganda conference, and not a security one.

Mr. Royle: Will the Prime Minister answer my right hon. Friend's Question about what Lord Chalfont has achieved over the last two years of his meanderings round Europe? Has he achieved anything at all with regard to disarmaments?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. Despite the fact that Lord Chalfont had to spend three months looking for the plan which we were told in the 1964 election was left behind, but which never existed except in the right hon. Gentleman's mind during that election, he has been very active both in Geneva and in New York and in a series of bilateral meetings with the Russians and everyone else in getting the negotiations to a point where, as the Soviet leaders and the American leaders have said, we are getting very close to a non-proliferation agreement.

Mr. Rankin: Are not organisations like N.A.T.O., S.E.A.T.O., and CENTO bound under Article 51 of the Charter to submit to the United Nations their war plans for maintaining peace? Is that being done by these respective organisations?

The Prime Minister: I do not agree with my hon. Friend's colourful description of war plans for maintaining peace, but

I can say that all the alliances and treaties of which we are members fully carry out all the obligations of the United Nations.

DARTMOOR (PRISONER'S ESCAPE)

Mr. Heseltine: (by Private Notice)asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement about the escape of Frank Mitchell from H.M. Prison, Dartmoor.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins): Frank Samuel Mitchell was sentenced at the Berkshire Assizes in October. 1958, on charges of robbery with violence and robbery, to life imprisonment and 10 years' imprisonment concurrent.
Mitchell had been at Dartmoor since September, 1962, except for a trial period at Maidstone in July, 1965. At Dartmoor, he responded well to treatment and had been involved in no violence, or prison offence of any kind, since April, 1962. Sanction was, therefore, given in May, 1965, after 6½ years' imprisonment, for him to be employed on an outside working party.
For many years this has been the usual practice for long-term prisoners at Dartmoor who have reached a late stage in their sentence in the case of fixed sentences, or whose release is under consideration in the case of life sentences. The object of outside working parties is to test the trustworthiness and develop the responsibility of a prisoner in conditions of less than maximum supervision when his eventual return to the community is contemplated.
The former Governor of Dartmoor had recommended on several occasions that a date should be given for Mitchell's release. The general view of the authorities at the prison was that Mitchell had matured considerably: and his conduct on the working party since 1965 had given reason to expect that he would not abuse the degree of trust which employment in an outside working party entails.
I very much regret that this trust proved to be unfounded. The most strenuous efforts are being pursued for his recapture, which, in the case of previous escapes from Dartmoor, have mostly proved to be quickly successful.

Mr. Heseltine: Will the Secretary of State say what steps he intends to take to ensure that other prisoners with a record of escapes with violence such as Mitchell's are not permitted to take part in working parties? Is it not a fact that the prison authorities have twice been warned within the last three months by local residents of the anxieties that this prisoner was causing in the locality?

Mr. Jenkins: I will certainly review most carefully the provisions for the use of prisoners on outside working parties, but what must be faced—and what is a difficult issue—is that where prisoners are at a stage—and it was made clear by the trial judge in this case that he imposed a life sentence so that it might be reviewed from time to time and not in order that it might be what it said in these circumstances—where recommendations are being made that release should be contemplated it is, in my view, necessary that we should try prisoners out in these conditions rather than let them out upon the public without any basis of release on licence, and without any trial as to how they behave.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Can the right hon. Gentleman either deny or confirm a report which I saw earlier today that it was 40 minutes before this escape was brought to the notice of anybody in authority?

Mr. Jenkins: I have no knowledge of the exact time, but I must make it clear to the House that outside working parties do involve a calculated risk. It is not difficult to escape from outside working parties. These are a preparation for the release of a prisoner at some future time. In Mitchell's case the time had not been arranged when he might be fully released. Unless the House is to take the view that prisoners should never be released I do not know how one can prepare them for release without placing them in this sort of transitional position.

Dr. David Owen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this is causing great concern in Devon? Nine prisoners have escaped this year from outside working parties. We realise that it is extremely difficult to assess what prisoners are likely to escape, but will not my right hon. Friend give some attention to the conditions on Dartmoor? He must agree

that when the mists come down it is easy to escape and that this places a very heavy burden on the Devon police.

Mr. Jenkins: I am aware of the difficulties to which my hon. Friend has referred. My view, and that of the Home Office, is that Dartmoor is no longer a suitable prison to use. It is a very expensive prison. But when I visited Dartmoor in the spring of this year, accompanied by the hon. Member for Tavistock (Mr. Heseltine), I was under very heavy local pressure—in which, I believe, the hon. Member joined, quite legitimately—not to close Dartmoor because of its local importance.

Mr. Hogg: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the last part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question? Is it true or untrue that the prison authorities had been warned twice during the last three months by local residents that this prisoner was giving ground for anxiety? Can he say whether there was any indication on what grounds these warnings were made, and what account was taken of them?

Mr. Jenkins: I am not aware of this, but I will look into it closely. My information is that since the decision—which, I admit, must always be a difficult one—to put this prisoner on an outside working party was taken, as long ago as May, 1965, his conduct until yesterday on this working party had been exemplary. Clearly, the impression which he created was a mistaken impression, but there was nothing, as far as I am at present aware, in his previous conduct within the past 19 months which gave rise to cause for belief that this would happen.

Mr. Peter Mills: Will the right hon. Gentleman be in mind that some of us who have wives and children living in close proximity to the Moor—as I do—had a very unpleasant night last night as a result of this escape? Will he realise that we have genuine fears for the safety of the people of this area and take steps to see that this sort of thing does not happen again?

Mr. Jenkins: I will bear this in mind. I in no way underestimate the fears of the hon. Member and his family, and of the many other people concerned. But the only ways to avoid this—as far as his locality is concerned—are to close


down Dartmoor, to which course there is considerable local opposition, or secondly, to decide that we should never try this experimental half-way house.
I must tell the House quite frankly that if we are not to do this—unless we take the view, which certainly nobody advocated in the free-ranging debate that we had yesterday, that we should never let people out if they have a record of violence—we shall put these people in greater danger, unless we try these transitional methods and not merely let prisoners out straight on to the public without any prospect of recall at all.

Mr. Bessell: Will not the right hon. Gentleman consider the question of security again? About one prisoner every six weeks is escaping from Dartmoor at the moment, and this is causing real anxiety throughout Devon and Cornwall.

Mr. Jenkins: I would point out to the hon. Member that the situation with respect to escapes from close conditions in Dartmoor recently has been better than in the previous two years, but there have been escapes from outside working parties, where, as I have said quite frankly and firmly, a degree of calculated risk is necessary and inevitable.

Mr. Whitaker: Since Dartmoor is disliked by every prison officer who has worked there, as well as being obsolete and a contradiction to every idea of modern penal policy, will my right hon. Friend now give a firm date for its early closing?

Mr. Jenkins: I would certainly have given a firm date before now had it not been for the very large rise in the prison population which has taken place over the last year or two. However, as I told the House yesterday—and there was certainly a general welcome for these proposals; they were not contradicted—one of the important provisions of the Criminal Justice Bill is designed somewhat to reduce the prison population and, therefore, to make it rather easier for us to dispose of obsolete establishments like Dartmoor at an early date.

Mr. Sharples: Is the Home Secretary aware that at the time of his trial this prisoner was described by the doctor as

an aggressive psychopath, although not legally insane? How many prisoners were in the working party? How many prison officers were there with those prisoners?

Mr. Jenkins: The number of prisoners was five. There was one prison officer with them. I must make it clear to the House that it is, and has long been, the practice that outside working parties are based on a degree of trust. If hon. Members wish to say that we should abolish outside working parties, I think that they should have said so yesterday in general, and not today in particular.

Mr. Hogg: Is not this question of the obsolescence of Dartmoor closely tied up with the reconstruction of the security wing at Albany? Cannot the Home Secretary give us some reassuring news as to when this will be complete?

Mr. Jenkins: Nobody doubts the obsolescence of Dartmoor. The difficulty is to get rid of any prison accommodation at the present time in view of the pressure upon our resources. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, there are two separate Albany projects. There is a general prison at Albany, which is proceeding very fast and which will be ready quite soon. There is also the special branch, which is not directly equivalent to Dartmoor, and on that we are finalising the plans. I think that it would be a mistake, at a time when the Mountbatten inquiry is on the point of reporting its general views on close security in prisons, completely to finalise these plans before we have the views of the inquiry.

Mr. Lipton: Realising, as he must, what a very heavy additional burden is imposed upon the local police by escapes from Dartmoor, and this one in particular, will my right hon. Friend say what steps he is taking to supplement or reinforce the efforts of the Devon police by bringing in Service personnel?

Mr. Jenkins: As my hon. Friend and the House may be aware, the Royal Marines are co-operating in the search. One hundred Royal Marines are engaged in this, divided into three search parties. In addition two helicopters provided by the R.A.F. are being used.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Mr. Jasper More.

Mr. Heseltine: On a point of order. In view of the profoundly unsatisfactory nature of the Secretary of State's answer, particularly to the second part of my supplementary question, I give notice that I shall raise this matter on the Adjournment.

Mr. Speaker: It is always better to give notice in the conventional way.

PRESS AND BROADCASTING FREEDOM

3.45 p.m.

Mr. Jasper More: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to give great freedom to the Press and to broadcasting authorities by clarifying and amending the law relating to contempt of court, official secrets and defamation.
Journalists are born free, but everywhere they are in chains. Of all the countries in the Western world, that, to our shame, is true as much in our country as in any other—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Mr. More: To a large extent, Parliament bears the responsibility for this state of affairs. As long ago as 1889 an Official Secrets Act was passed. It was, perhaps, not a very clever Act, because it did not cover the offence of spying. Twenty years later this country was in the throes of a spy mania and nobody went to bed without first looking under the bed to see if there was a German spy there. We also had at that time a new Government, purposive and gritty—in fact, a Liberal Government. They decided to bring in a new Bill. It was launched, curiously enough, considering the date, in another place—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. If hon. Gentlemen wish to stay in the Chamber, they should listen to the debate.

Mr. More: It was brought to this House on, of all dates in the year, 18th August. Reading these things, one feels that there are worse things to live under than a Labour Goverment. Hon. Members will remember the appalling heat of the summer of 1911. Remembering the heat of that year and the date on which the Bill was brought in, perhaps it is not surprising that the Bill was passed through all its stages in this House in less than one hour.
That Act is with us still, but it was made worse by another Act in 1920, when we still had a Liberal Prime Minister and a Liberal Attorney-General. Those Acts were not well drafted. They were very rapidly widened from their original purpose. The judges found themselves bound


to interpret them so widely that almost everything official automatically became secret.
There are, as we know, many ways round this situation. Ex-Ministers, if they are sufficiently eminent, can write their memoirs and collect handsome royalties. Ministers in office can indulge in leaks. Government Departments like the Foreign Office can lose their copies of the Munich Treaty and the Hoare-Laval Pact. The Leader of the House can leave secret documents in a fashionable restaurant. None of these things seems to lead to prosecutions. But this does not help the Press. The threat of prosecution is always there.
I turn to the law of defamation. In spite of the very great improvements brought about by the hon. Member for Manchester, Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever), in his Defamation Act, 1952, the law of defamation still abounds in anomalies which inhibit free reporting. I will take only one example which many of us in the House remember from the debates three years ago—the Rachman case. I am informed on good authority that the details of that case were well known to journalists long before we were debating it here and that they could have been fully reported if the libel laws had not made the risk too great.
All these things have been considered and reported on by a joint working party drawn from a society of lawyers known as "Justice" and from the British Committee of the International Press Institute. The Bill which I ask leave to introduce will embody some, though not all, of their recommendations. These are recommendations which I would have hoped would have struck a responsive note on the Government Front Bench.

For example, after a celebrated official secrets case involving my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), it was emphasised in a speech in the House that these measures should not be
used to handicap opposition, to stifle criticism and to cloak incompetence in high places."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 5th December. 1938; Vol. 342, c. 914.]
Those were the words of the present Solicitor-General.
Yet the present Government, confronted with these recommendations and with a demand to take the initiative and put these matters right, reply that there can be no question of legislative time being found in this Session for a reform of this branch of the law. This is a reply which, in view of some of the rubbish the Government have been introducing, it is difficult to comment on in Parliamentary language.
It is in these circumstances, that I ask the leave the House to introduce my Bill in private Members' time.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. More, Mr. Anthony Berry, Mr. Arthur Davidson, Mr. William Deedes, Mr. Leslie Hale, Mr. Emlyn Hooson, Mr. Tom Iremonger, Mr. Harold Lever, Mr. William Roots, and Mr. Anthony Royle.

PRESS AND BROADCASTING FREEDOM

Bill to give greater freedom to the Press and to broadcasting authorities by clarifying and amending the law relating to contempt of court, official secrets and defamation, presented accordingly and read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday and to be printed. [Bill 150.]

Orders of the Day — LONDON GOVERNMENT BILL

Order for Third Reading read.

3.50 p.m.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Miss Alice Bacon): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
It is perhaps unnecessary to speak at great length at this stage of the Bill, because, after it had had its Second Reading, the first Amendment, which covered the same ground, was discussed for nearly an hour longer than was taken by the Second Reading debate. I therefore think that there has been adequate discussion of its principles.
As the House knows, the Bill provides for triennial, elections to the Greater London Council and triennial elections to the London borough councils to be held in successive years instead of, as under the London Government Act. 1963, in the same year, and ultimately, but not in 1967, on the same day; and for the new arrangements to be put in train by postponing until 1968 the borough council elections that would otherwise be held next year.
In our debates, there has been little dispute about the main provision, which is to ensure that the two sets of elections do not have to be held on the same day. My right hon. Friend said on Second Reading that in his view the arguments for and against such an arrangement were fairly evenly balanced. That appeared to be the view of the then Government during the passage of what was the London Government Bill in 1963. In fact, they promised to look into the question of altering arrangements for simultaneous elections before the Report stage of the Bill in another place, but no change was made.
In our view, this matter is properly to be determined by consideration of what is practicable. Once the new London boroughs had been set up there were in office the town clerks who have to run both sets of elections. They set up their own working party to consider the problems involved. I want to emphasise that the working party was not set up at the instance of the Home Office, nor, it is understood, at the instance of the

London borough councils, but by the Association of London Town Clerks itself, as a professional study. The report of the working party was forwarded by the London Boroughs Association to the Home Office in April, and copies of it have, with the permission of the Association, been placed in the Library of the House, as was requested in Committee by the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod).
I want to make it clear that this report, and we never hid the fact, deal with elections on the same day. But the real difference between the Opposition and the Government relates to the Bill's proposal to defer the 1967 London borough council elections which, but for these provisions, would have been held one month after the Greater London government council elections.
We believe, in spite of everything that has been said during the Committee stage, that there is a very good case for deferment. If the elections are held in different years, we think, as does the Greater London Council, that this will help to foster a continuing interest in local government. Those in favour of combined elections on the same day say that in this way the electors interest would be concentrated, and a better understanding of the respective functions of the Greater London Council and the London boroughs would be promoted.
This was the argument of the Royal Commission on Local Government in London, although we must bear in mind also, when discussing this subject, that the Royal Commission also recommended annual elections for the boroughs.
Whatever views may be held on the respective merits of elections on the same day and elections in successive years, I have no doubt at all that the proposed interim arrangement of elections in successive months would have given us the worst of both worlds. There is not the concentration of interest—given that this is a valid point, as some people argue—on one day, and there is not the means of fostering the continuing interest in local government which could be achieved by elections in different years. Instead, I believe that there is likely to be confusion and annoyance for electors who are asked to turn out twice within a few weeks for two different sets of elections.
The 1964 elections were accompanied by exceptional publicity both for the Greater London Council and the London boroughs. Those were the first elections to the new Greater London Council and to the new London borough councils. Yet even in those exceptional circumstances, with all the publicity that was given to the elections, when large polls might have been expected, there was a big drop—over 8 per cent.—from 44·2 per cent. in the Greater London Council elections to 35·7 per cent. in the London borough council elections which were held one month later. These figures seem to give substantial support to the view that an arrangement by which elections take place in successive months is as unreasonable as it is unnecessary.
It is quite true, as was pointed out during earlier stages of the Bill, that for the councils in the counties outside London there are elections in successive months, but this is unavoidable in the case of boroughs or districts whose elections are held annually. In London, the situation is quite different. Since elections both to the Greater London Council and to the borough councils are held at three-year intervals such an arrangement is unnecessary and can easily be avoided by having elections in different years, with the advantages I have already mentioned.
We, have been asked why, if we can have two elections at a few weeks' interval in the counties, we cannot do the same in London. It is not the ideal arrangement for the counties—and I live in a county—but it cannot be avoided there because, as I said, there are annual elections to the non-county boroughs and to the district councils. In London, it can be avoided.
Another point is that if the two elections are held in the same year in London, with triennial elections both for the boroughs and for the Greater London Council, there will be no local government elections at all for three years. I do not believe that it is a good thing not to have local government elections at all for three years. It is also worth remembering, as I pointed out in our earlier proceedings, that the London borough councils elected in 1964 will, by 1967, have only had two years of effective operation, and the Government regard this change as a commonsense

measure. It seems to have been so seen by the majority of London boroughs, including three that are Conservative controlled, when the London Boroughs Association sought the views of their constituent councils early this year.
I am sorry to have to come back—as it may be considered rather irrelevant —to the decisions of the Special Committee of the London Boroughs Association. I do not regard this as a very great point, but it has been blown up out of all proportion by the right hon. Member for Enfield, West. I believe him to have been completely mistaken every time he has referred to this aspect.
On 29th November, when moving to report Progress, the right hon. Member for Enfield, West said:
We think that the Minister of State, Home Office, would welcome the rest, and we hope to accord that to her. She would then come back refreshed with new arguments, which might even relate to the Amendments before the Committee … She would perhaps like time to turn over the simple fact that the earliest moment that one can question the minutes of one meeting is at the next meeting. I have no doubt that we shall return to this matter."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 29th November. 1966; Vol. 737, c. 383.]
Earlier, the right hon. Gentleman had alleged—column 296–7 of HANSARD—that Conservative members of the Special Committee of the London Boroughs Association had questioned the minutes at the next meeting of the Special Committee. I told the right hon. Gentleman that he was wrong at the time, but he did not believe that he was and still said that I was wrong. I have looked into this matter a little more and I hope, during the next two or three minutes, to prove that the right hon. Gentleman was completely wrong. It has been said that this is an irrelevancy, but the record needs to be put straight.
On 28th January, the Special Committee of the London Boroughs Association unanimously agreed with the views expressed by the Greenwich Council, but instructed that the views of the constituent councils should be sought. The decision was completely unanimous.

Mr. Iain Macleod: rose—

Miss Bacon: The right hon. Gentleman must wait until I have finished and


then he will see where he has made his mistake.
The decision was completely unanimous and the committee instructed the honorary secretary to write to the boroughs to state that the committee was unanimously in favour of the proposed change.
There were present at the Special Committee representatives of Bexley, Bromley, Ealing, Greenwich, Hackney, Harrow, Havering, Merton, Wandsworth and Westminster, not all Labour boroughs, as the right hon. Gentleman will realise. The committee's report to the London Boroughs Association at a meeting on 9th November—and this was to the whole Association—said:
We are unanimously in favour of this proposal and subject to the views of the constituent councils which we have sought we have authorised the honorary secretary to submit the suggestion to the Home Secretary.
The unanimity of the committee was not questioned by any of the committee members present at the Association meeting, and all were present except the Ealing representative. However, the representative from Bromley stated that the matter had been put before the committee at very short notice, which was true, and that on further consideration he had changed his mind.
However, a woman alderman from Enfield, which is not represented on the Special Committee—no doubt this is the source of the right hon. Gentleman's information, which was wrong—said at the full Boroughs Association meeting that two members of the council had told her that it was not a true minute and she asked whether it was true. The chairman assured her that the report was correct. No members of the special committee challenged the chairman's reply and no member of the committee has at any time suggested that the decision was not unanimous. Only much later in the day did the Opposition begin to seek a hidden motive.
On 28th April, in reply to a Question by the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), my right hon. Friend informed the House of the representations of the London Boroughs Association.

Mr. Iain Macleod: Like the right hon. Lady, I am not anxious to pursue this

point— unless she wants to—because I am convinced that she is making what I described as an extremely elementary mistake. When a minute is produced, in the first instance it is the draft of the secretary and cannot be the opinion of the Committee until next time—the minutes of the previous meeting are always the first item which one takes at a meeting. Therefore, the fact that it appears in what I might call the secretary's draft as unanimous I have admitted from the beginning. I have never heard about the alderman from Enfield, whom the right hon. Lady has just mentioned, having anything to do with it. The point is that at the next meeting Alderman Jordan—perhaps the right hon. Lady wishes to contradict him—and two other councillors challenged the validity of the secretary's draft.

Miss Bacon: That is not my information. My information is that this was not challenged at the meeting of the Special Committee, but that at the meeting of the Association the woman alderman from Enfield said that someone had informed here that the minute was not correct. The chairman assured her that it was. My information is that no member of the Special Committee itself challenged the chairman's reply and no member of the committee at any time has suggested that the decision was not unanimous. Both the right hon. Gentleman and I have to rely on other people for information about that, but that is the information which I have received and I have seen that it has been checked as far as possible. I have returned to the matter only because of the right hon. Gentleman's attitude when we discussed these matters on 29th November.
As I was saying, on 28th April, in reply to a Question by the hon. Member for Orpington, my right hon. Friend informed the House of the representations of the London Boroughs Association and said that they were being considered and that the reasons advanced by the hon. Gentleman for deferring the 1967 borough council elections would be looked at sympathetically. This seems to have provoked no reaction from any hon. Member opposite. Not only was little interest shown in the matter in the House, but Home Office Ministers received not a single letter between that date in April


and the time, three months later, when it was announced that the Bill was to be introduced.
The sequence of events leading up to the introduction of the Bill was precisely as I stated on Second Reading. I shall not repeat what I then said, other than to say that it originated with representations from the Greater London Council and the London Boroughs Association and not with soundings by the Home Office. The Opposition have been totally unable to substantiate different accounts or allegations of pressure, first from one quarter and then from another, from any improper motive.
Some hon. Members opposite seem also to have been confused about how the voters in Essex, Kent and Surrey were treated under the London Government Act, 1963. County council elections were postponed for the whole of those counties in 1964.

Mr. Speaker: We cannot, on Third Reading, discuss what was done in 1964.

Miss Bacon: The relevance is that it was a precedent which had been set and which was challenged by hon. Members opposite in our earlier discussions, but I shall bow to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker.
To sum up, we believe that combined elections for the Greater London Council and the London borough councils would not work satisfactorily and that, therefore, there must be amending legislation to provide for elections in successive years. In addition, we think that the present arrangement for two closely following sets of triennial elections in the same year gives us the worst of all possible arrangements. In our view, the sensible course is accordingly to introduce the amending legislation now so as to put matters right before the next elections.

4.9 p.m.

Mr. Quintin Hogg: The right hon. Lady has proposed the Third Reading of the Bill in what I can only describe as a perfunctory and banal speech in which she has said nothing new, except what was out of order. I do not intend to pursue her into the jungle of your displeasure, Mr. Speaker, because on Third Reading we are limited to what is in the Bill, nor into the arcane secrets of the voters in 1963 in the Kent and Surrey elections or the mysteries of

the Special Committee of the London Boroughs Association.
Perhaps, before I do stick strictly to the Bill, I may not be rebuked if I thank the Home Secretary and the Leader of the House, who is absent, for having allowed us these two extra half days for debate on the Bill. In doing so, they acknowledged the seriousness of the issue which divides the parties in this case, and showed themselves to be better Parliamentarians than the Under-Secretary of State, whose officious observation from a sedentary position I have just heard, or the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), whose attitude towards this Measure has been both frivolous and discreditable and unworthy of the name of Liberal.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: It was because I did not acknowledge the seriousness of this issue that I protested when the Government gave way to the Opposition and allowed the two extra half days.

Mr. Hogg: That is why the right hon. Gentlemen opposite have proved themselves to be better as Parliamentarians than the hon. Gentleman the Member for Orpington, because by giving us these two extra half days they have shown us that they recognise clearly the strength and feeling which exists on this side of the House. If I may say so, it is the mark of Parliamentary democracy as much for the majority to prevail in the vote as for the majority to show a certain degree of consideration for the views and feelings of the minority when deep passions are roused. I therefore thank the Home Secretary for showing himself to be a better Parliamentarian than some of his supporters.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins): I am grateful for the right hon. and learned Gentleman's thanks, but I would have thought that the Opposition's strength and feeling might have shown itself by a greater strength of Members.

Mr. Hogg: It is the London Members who feel most strongly and who wish to speak, but when the right hon. Gentleman sees our strength in the Lobby I hope that he will not be disappointed.
It is true, as the right hon. Lady has said, that a great deal of what needs to


be said has been said on the earlier phases of the Bill, but it would be a mockery if we allowed the Third Reading to go by default without summarising the state of the argument as we see it. We are opposing the Bill on principle. The principle is that one should not deprive voters of a vote to which they are entitled by law. One should not prolong the life of an elected body be yond its allotted span by the brute force of Parliamentary majority. I would go further and say that the principle is that it is never right to do this without proof of necessity which, in this case, is absent, and even then only after adequate consultation between parties and other interested bodies. That principle has been breached and virtually, at this stage of the Bill, the Government have offered no defence whatever for having breached it.
The right hon. Gentleman knows that we have never objected throughout these proceedings, and we do not object now, to the principle of staggering the elections of boroughs and the Greater London Council in separate years. That has never been the issue. That has never been the principle on which we fought. Obviously, it is open to dispute, but we have, in fact, never sought to dispute it. The right hon. Lady referred to it as being the main principle in the Bill. The main principle of the Bill is that the Government are depriving voters of their votes. The main principle of the Bill is that right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite are prolonging, by the brute force of their Parliamentary majority, the life of elected bodies beyond their allotted span. The main principle of the Bill is not separate elections in separate years.
The main principle of the Bill is not supported by the report of the Town Clerks' Committee. Indeed, the right hon. Lady took pride in the fact that this is now in the Library, but that report establishes be yond doubt that it is wholly irrelevant to the real principle in the Bill, which is to deprive voters of their votes. The report says:
The Working Party has met to consider the practicability of simultaneous elections.
It says:
We have confined our consideration to the administrative problems posed by this combination …
of two sets of elections on the same day; and that blows sky high the suggestion

that was made by the right hon. Gentleman, in proposing the Second Reading, and by the right hon. Lady, a few minutes ago, that the Town Clerks' Committee in any way supported the real issue in the Bill.

Miss Bacon: I have never said, either now or at any stage of the Bill, that the town clerks' memorandum did anything other than discuss the proposal to have elections on the same day.

Mr. Hogg: We agree at last that the Town Clerks' Committee, like the flowers that bloom in the spring, has nothing to do with the case. What is now apparently plain, and what is now agreed by the right hon. Lady, is that what we are fighting about on Third Reading, is the claim of the Government to the naked right to deprive people of their votes for 12 months—and we are fighting about nothing else—to do so when there was no necessity, to do so when there has been no prior consultation between parties, and to do so by the brute force of a Parliamentary majority which was not elected on this mandate. The right hon. Gentleman knows that. The hon. Member for Orpington knows that, and the right hon. Lady who has just spoken knows that.
Now, on what kind of arguments has it been sought to approve the principle in the Bill to deprive voters of their vote for 12 months? The hon. and learned Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman), whom I am glad to see in his place, with a fine disregard for relevance, and in a series of magnificent forensic jury speeches, said that we were to accept this Bill because, in effect, the Conservative Party was alleged to have acted for political motives in passing the major legislation of 1963. We must leave it to another day to fight about that, because this is not in the Bill, but I would say to the hon. and learned Gentleman, in passing, that if he had established his point, which I do not admit, it would be a sorry and shoddy defence of a Government Measure to say that two wrongs make a right, because that is all that it would amount to if it were correct.
A slightly more sophisticated, but not, in the end, a more defensible argument, in favour of the Bill has been proposed


from time to time from the benches opposite. It was proposed by the right hon. Lady a few moments ago. It was proposed by the hon. Member for Orpington during the Committee stage. He claims that the same was done to the County Councils in Kent and Surrey in 1963. The right hon. Lady was called to order when she produced this argument, and, therefore, I will not be called to order, because I do not intend to refute it. It would be easy enough if I sought to do so. The only point which the right hon. Lady sought to put forward with any success this afternoon was that, if the voters were not to be deprived of their votes, to which they are entitled by law, there would have to be, oh, horror! two successive elections in two successive months. The right hon. Lady was uncomfortably aware, though she utterly failed to answer the point, that in every county in England and Wales and, for aught I know, in Scotland as well, the same situation arises every time there is a county election.
Apparently, according to the right hon. Lady, the London voters are to be so pampered that what their fellow citizens in the rest of the realm have to put up with they cannot be expected to support. Apparently, to expect the London voters to do this and to exercise their rights as voters for just one year is—I quote her words—both unreasonable and unnecessary.
Even if one did accept that it was a terrible misfortune for the voters to have to vote twice in two successive months, I can only say that anyone who had the smallest respect for democracy and for the responsibility of the electorate would insist on this occasion that they should do so. I assure the right hon. Lady and her right hon. Friend that the Conservative voters in the boroughs are raring to go. It is they who will be deprived of their votes. If the Labour and Liberal voters are not willing to fulfil their responsibilities in a democratic society, they must take the democratic consequences.

Mr. Lubbock: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman saying that in 1964 only one-third of the voters in the May elections had the smallest respect for democracy?

Mr. Hogg: Like all right hon. and hon. Members, we want to see as high a poll as possible in local elections, but, when the elections of 1964 elected the borough councils for three years, to prolong their mandate without the smallest necessity—the right hon. Gentleman now knows that there was no necessity—without the smallest consultation, and by a sheer act of the brute force of an automatic majority in Parliament, is something which no man with any respect for democracy should seriously support in Parliament, least of all one who usurps the once honourable name of Liberal, least of all one who usurps the ancient tradition of a great party.
If Liberal and Labour voters are too apathetic or too lazy to go to the polls, let the Conservative voters do their job for them. Let them take the consequences. Democracy does not consist in pampering the lazy or the irresponsible to the deprivation of the serious-minded. On the other hand, I would like to think —indeed, I am sure this is so—that in this attack upon the voters of London the right hon. Lady has committed a serious slander upon them. I believe that, if this were taking place in Leeds, she would take a more responsible attitude.
It is said that there would be a low poll. Originally, that was an argument presented by the right hon. Gentleman on Second Reading in favour of staggering the elections between the years. It is now trotted out as an argument for not having elections in two successive months. It has been replied to in detail at every stage. There is no reason to suppose that the poll will be lower. There is no reason to suppose it because in successive years, in particular when there were three successive elections in 1965 culminating in a Parliamentary election, there was no such low poll as the right hon. Gentleman fears. But even if there were a basis of truth in that argument it would be no reason whatever for disfranchising local government voters who have a right to vote at the time when the mandate of their local council expires.
Last of all, the right hon. Gentleman relies upon the respectable presence in the wrong lobby of Westminster, Sutton and Harrow Councils. I have answered that before. Obviously, breaches of principle, however serious, can be condoned when they have no practical results. But this


argument is not about safe seats. It is not about Tower Hamlets, or Westminster. The Government know this, the hon. Member for Orpington knows it, everyone knows it. It is about the 20 marginal seats in Greater London, and it is there that there is a stark division between the two parties, one party—unfortunately, in the minority in this House —deprived of its votes and deprived of its right to elect new borough councils, and the other party sitting pretty on its marginal seats and afraid to face the polls.
The right hon. Gentleman need not imagine that he has escaped attention. We cannot afford to disregard principle when the fundamentals of democracy are involved, even though the issue may appear to be a little one. The right hon. Gentleman, as the possessor of a Parliamentary majority, has in this case been the trustee of democracy, and in pushing this Bill through against the rights of the minority he has been guilty of a gross and deliberate breach of trust.

4.26 p.m.

Mr. Bernard Weatherill: I am very grateful for the opportunity to follow my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) in this debate, especially as I was unable, being out of the country, to take part on Second Reading and subsequent stages. I have carefully read the proceedings in those debates, so that I can, I think, take a fairly detached view of what has gone on.
I say at once that there is a case for holding the Greater London Council elections and the London borough elections in different years, especially if they were to be held on the same day. This is not in dispute. What is in dispute—this is the point made by my right hon. and learned Friend, and I make it again—is whether it is right or, indeed, honourable, to extend the life of the London borough councils to four years, when they were elected for three years, and to do so without reference to the wishes of the electorate.
This is the point which my right hon. and learned Friend has made so forcibly today and which others of my right hon. and hon. Friends have been making

throughout our proceedings on the Bill. I cannot believe that any hon. Member who has any feeling for democracy will agree that it is right. Local councils are the very basis of our democratic system, and nothing could be more calculated to bring that system into disrepute than to produce a Measure of this kind.
There could be only one possible reason for taking such action, and that would be to avoid confusion, the kind of confusion there would be if the Greater London Council elections and the London borough elections were to be held on the same day. But this is not the case and it never was. Confusion seems to have arisen outside even in such institutions as the B.B.C. The House will recall that my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) drew attention to this in Committee, pointing out that on 16th November the B.B.C. announced that London local government electors would be saved a double trip to the polls on the same day. But, as I say, this was never the case. The Greater London Council elections are to be held on 13th April, and the London borough elections were to be held on 11th May.
Far from there being confusion, interest in the elections—here I take issue with the right hon. Lady—would have been intensified, because both elections deal with different aspects of the same matter. The electors will vote on 13th April to decide the control of the Greater London Council and all that that involves. One month later, on 11th May, they would have had an opportunity to decide how local affairs were to be run, and by whom. The two elections are largely complementary, and it is absolutely a myth to say that they would have caused confusion. The reverse is true.
On Second Reading, the Home Secretary made great play with statistics in his effort to prove that, whenever the London County Council elections and the Metropolitan borough elections had been held in the same year in the past, the polls were exceptionally low.
It is worth saying again, even at this late stage, that the fact of the matter is that in 1949, when the elections were held in the same year, the average poll was 38·2 per cent. At the next four elections, when they were held in different years, the


polls were: in 1953, 39·9 per cent.; in 1956, 30·9 per cent.; in 1959, 32·1 per cent.; and in 1962, 32·3 per cent. In 1964, when the polling for the Greater London Council and the new London boroughs were held in the same year, the Greater London Council poll was 44 per cent., as the right hon. Lady told us this afternoon, and that for the boroughs was 35·7 per cent.

Mr. Lubbock: Is the hon. Gentleman comparing the percentage figures for the whole Greater London area in 1964 with those of the inner London area in previous elections? If so, will he bear in mind that we always have very much higher polls in the outer London area than in the old L.C.C.?

Mr. Weatherill: Perhaps the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) will be patient. I am just coming to that point.
What the right hon. Lady did not say in support of her statistics today was that in the inner London boroughs the percentage poll was only 27 per cent. and that was largely as a result of a low poll of only 17 per cent. in Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman is right in saying that the percentage of poll in the outer boroughs is always higher than in the inner boroughs.
A number of my right hon. and hon. Friends have made the strong point that if one takes the 1949 and the 1964 figures together the average poll is 36·9 per cent., and compared with the years when the L.C.C. and the Metropolitan boroughs polled in different years the percentage poll shows a drop of only 1 per cent. Therefore, there is no more force in the low poll argument than in the argument of confusion.
There is, of course, the argument—I do not think that this point has been made during the debate—that local party organisations would have had their resources extended. It is only right to pay tribute to the part which local party organisations play in keeping interest in local elections high. We all agree that the polls are not nearly as high as we would like them to be, but without the activities of local party organisations they would be very much lower.
As one who has had to deal with these matters over many years, I have no hesitation in saying that I think that although two elections in one year may embarrass local party treasurers the task of local party workers is made not more difficult, but considerably easier, because they can use the same marked register for both elections.
Why has the Bill been brought forward at this time? It is certainly nothing to do with confusion or low polls. The reason, simply and solely, is political. The Government know that the tide of public opinion is running against them, particularly in local matters of education and housing. Nowhere has this been more clearly seen than in my own borough of Croydon, where we have recently had three by-elections. In each of them the Labour candidate was convincingly beaten, and in the Waddon Ward, a Labour majority of 515 was recently turned into a Conservative majority of 765.
The Government admit that their legislative programme is overcrowded. It is, therefore, legitimate to ask why the Bill is being given precedence over so many others of much greater importance. I have been pressing the President of the Board of Trade to introduce a very simple Measure which would have direct relevance to our export trade. I have asked him if he will implement the Report of the Johnston Committee. I got nowhere over a long period, but I have a letter in my hand, written recently, in which he says that he is fully aware of the views—

Mr. Albert Evans: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I always understood that on the Third Reading of a Bill right hon. and hon. Members must confine themselves to the contents of the Bill.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman with care. He is getting a little wide of the subject of the Third Reading, and I hope that he will return to the point.

Mr. Weatherill: I bow to your Ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I will not read that letter in support of my argument. Nevertheless, it is a fact that this Bill has been given precedence over other very much more important Measures which would


have had direct relevance to our present problems.
The only reason for the Government to introduce the Bill at present is that they are hedging their bets. They are fearful of losing control of the Greater London Council next April. They are introducing the Bill to ensure that for at least a year the control of certain marginal boroughs will remain in their hands.
It is a sad business and a bad business. Carried to its extremes—and in their present desperate state the Government show themselves capable of carrying things to extremes—it could perpetuate the ruling party in power. The Bill is an affront to hard-won democracy. It is sheer jiggerypokery. The Government know this, the House knows it, and I am certain that The country also knows it. I believe that the country will give its verdict on this shabby business on 13th April next year, and also in May, 1968, or whenever the borough council elections are to take place.

4.37 p.m.

Mr. David Weitzman: I would not have ventured to take up the time of the House but for the remarks of the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg). He said that I put forward a case of two wrongs making a right. I did nothing of the sort, and I hope that he will do me the compliment of reading my speeches carefully and intelligently, as I know that he can. What I said quite clearly was that the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) had accused the Government of putting the Bill forward for ulterior motives, and that it did not lie in his mouth to make an allegation of that kind, having regard to what his Government did in promoting the London Government Act, 1963.
I put forward a reasoned argument in support of the Bill, which he did not for a moment attempt to refute. That argument was simply that I knew from practical experience what would happen if elections were to take place upon the basis laid down in the 1963 Act, the confusion that would arise with the danger of one election following another within one month. It is no use hon. Members saying that this happens all over

the country. I am talking about London, and I know from experience what will happen. In this Bill, the Government have tidied up the position and put it on a sound administrative basis.

4.39 p.m.

Captain Walter Elliot: I do not want to detain the House for long. I decided to speak only because I wanted to draw the House's attention to one particular aspect of this sorry business.
Today, the Government are forcing through a Measure to gerrymander the borough elections. Tomorrow, they are steamrollering through a Measure to alter the procedure of the House. I do not think that those two events in one week are a coincidence. This is a black week in the history of the House of Commons, and I hope that the country will reflect on that. I recall that, during the Committee stage, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) consistently told us that we were wasting our time discussing the Bill.

Mr. Lubbock: Hear, hear.

Captain Elliot: The hon. Gentleman even had the effrontery to reprimand my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) and others of my hon. Friends for taking part when they were not Greater London Members. As I have suggested, however, this Measure does not only concern Greater London Members. It is a national issue. It concerns all right hon. and hon. Members, for it is gerrymandering elections, just as the Government are steamrollering alterations in procedure tomorrow.

Mr. William Molloy: Does the hon. Gentleman really mean that, when Liberals and Socialists criticise Tories, that is effrontery but when Tories criticise Liberals and Socialists that is making democracy work? It is a load of rubbish.

Captain Elliot: The hon. Gentleman is being very simple. It depends on what the criticism is. I would not generalise, but I have said, and repeat, that the Bill concerns not only Greater London Members, but is a national issue because it gerrymanders elections.
On Second Reading, the Home Secretary said that the Bill was not very controversial. Why he said that I find it difficult to fathom. Surely controversy, particularly about elections, is the stuff of democracy. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is now aware that this is a very controversial Bill. That is why the right hon. Lady's speech today was so unsatisfactory in the perfunctory manner in which she dealt with these vital principles.
I believe that, when it is shown that a Bill dealing with elections is controversial between the parties, it should be withdrawn. We have no constitution in this country. We live on our precedents. We are constantly reminded of them. I believe that we will live to regret the precedent being established by the Government in this Bill. Even at this late stage, after hearing the right hon. Lady, I must confess that to me the reasons on which the Government base their arguments are more confused than ever.
In earlier debates, the report made by town clerks has been referred to and it was said that the Home Secretary had attached weight to the arguments they put forward. But that has nothing to do with the issue. The elections were in any case going to be a month apart and there was no reason why the organisations of the borough councils should not be able to conduct two elections a month apart.

Mr. Lubbock: Does not the hon. and gallant Gentleman agree that, after the 1967 elections the two sets would have been held simultaneously, had it not been for the Bill, so that the town clerks' report is relevant in that case?

Captain Elliot: That is the argument put forward. We on this side have persistently stated that we are prepared to look at this in future and to stagger the elections—but only after the electorate have been properly consulted and informed of what is to happen.
The right hon. Lady seemed to think that the main argument on which this Measure was based was that the electorate would be apathetic. I shall not go over the arguments that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) gave. I would only remark that the right hon. Lady gave us some figures for Greater

London and then dealt rather quickly with the counties, which go through this procedure; but she gave us no figures for county elections.
Half my constituency is in Greater London and the other half comes under the county council. Speaking from memory, I believe that the urban district that is in the county of Surrey has a higher percentage of polling than the other half of my constituency. I was disappointed that the right hon. Lady did not give figures to back up what appeared to be her main argument.
Has any consideration been given to the inconvenience involved to councillors? The argument has been made that they have not done their full three years. But they were elected until April, 1967. They put themselves up for election until that date and it is a serious business for quite a number of them that the period is to be extended by another year. I could produce the headlines in one of my local papers about two weeks ago concerning three key councillors who must resign because of pressure of work, so I suppose that we shall be faced with three by-elections in the new year.
Whatever the arguments for or against the Bill, the fact remains that there is no agreement about it between the two sides of the House and in these circumstances it should be withdrawn. When the elections were held, the voters were not aware that such a Bill would be produced. There is no agreement about it. We for our part agree that, in future, the elections should be staggered but only after the matter has been put before the electorate and the councillors.
In these circumstances, I appeal to the Government, even at this late stage, to reconsider the position and bear in mind that, in a democracy, on matters dealing with elections and boundaries, unless there is agreement between the two sides of the House, that so-called democracy is well on the way to becoming totalitarian if controversial measures are steamrollered through by the majority.

4.48 p.m.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: The hon. and gallant Member for Carshalton (Captain W. Elliot) rebuked me for criticising the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls) and the


hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover)—whom I am delighted to see here—for taking part in the Committee stage of the Bill.
I think that London Members know more about the local elections situation in London than people from outside, delighted as we are to see them in the Chamber and to discuss with them some of the problems we have in common. We have the Scottish Grand Committee to deal with Scottish affairs and the Welsh Grand Committee to deal with Welsh affairs. It is rather a pity that the Conservatives, considering the strength with which they have expressed opposition to the Bill, had to bring in at every stage of the discussion the hon. Members for Peterborough and Ormskirk.

Sir Douglas Glover: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I object very strongly to an hon. Member imputing that I have no right to speak in a debate and I ask him to withdraw. I am not a local Member, but a national Member.

Mr. Deputy Speaker(Mr. Sydney Irving): That is not a point of order.

Mr. Lubbock: I was not making any such imputation and I hope that the hon. Member for Ormskirk will acquit me of intending to do so. I was saying that it was rather a pity that the Conservatives, who have expressed such strong opposition to the Bill all the way through, had to bring in the hon. Member for Ormskirk and the hon. Member for Peterborough to make up their number.

Mr. Hogg: Where are the hon. Member's numbers?

Mr. Lubbock: The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) has asked me that question previously. If he had been paying attention to what I have been saying, he would recall that I said that London Members are best qualified to express themselves on this—while defending to the death, of course, the right of the hon. Member for Ormskirk to take part if he wishes. But the hon. Member for Ormskirk is not likely to be an expert on the London Government Act, 1963, nor the provisions of Schedule 5 and whether or not they should be altered by the Bill.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: Is the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) aware of what he is suggesting in saying that only London Members should take part in the proceedings on the Bill?

Mr. Lubbock: I did not say that.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: The imputation behind what the hon. Gentleman is saying is that no principle is involved—that the vital alteration of an election date is not a national principle needing detailed examination by hon. Members of the House as a whole.

Mr. Lubbock: That is exactly what I was about to suggest. The hon. Gentleman has taken the words out of my mouth.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: The Liberal Party has no principles.

Mr. Lubbock: I am saying that there is not a principle at stake here. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone said that, by giving two extra half days to the Committee stage and Third Reading, the Government had acknowledged the seriousness of the issue. This only underlines how foolish it was of the Government not to proceed on the advice that I gave them at 2.30 one morning when we were in Committee on the Bill. I said that I thought we could dispose of the whole business during the remainder of that night.
There is something illogical about the attitude of the Conservatives on this matter because, whereas one hon. Member claims that the legislative programme is overcrowded and that it is difficult to understand why the Bill should take precedence and thereby take up so much time, the Conservatives were screaming, in the middle of that night, for an extra half day, thus displacing important matters from the legislative programme. I was right in saying, in the middle of the night, that the Government were making a great mistake.
In spite of the fact that the hon. Member for Peterborough may feel strongly about this issue, none of my constituents do and I do not believe that any of the constituents of any other right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken do either. I have challenged hon. Members at successive stages to produce letters from


their constituents objecting to the Bill. The only answer I got was from the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone, who said that he had had a letter from someone in Orpington. I think that he muse have been making a mistake because, when I spoke to him about it afterwards, he said that he could not locate the letter at that time.
I do not believe that any great volume of correspondence has taken place on the subject—certainly nothing like the volume of correspondence, for example, on the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill, or on the export of animals for vivisection, on both of which we all have showers of letters and cards. I have had only one letter during the whole of the proceedings on this Bill.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: What has that to do with it?

Mr. Lubbock: Hon. Members are continually saying that the public feel strongly on the matter and that democratic rights are being denied. I ask them why, if that is so, our constituents have not taken the ordinary recourse of constituents and written to us.

Mr. Anthony Berry: The hon. Member made exactly the same point in Committee. I took him up on it then and I quoted at considerable length a letter I had received from a body of voters in my constituency. The hon. Gentleman was present at the time, because I commented on the fact that he had come back to his seat.

Mr. Lubbock: The hon. Genetleman quoted a letter from a body which had a political axe to grind. I remember that quotation, but it does not disprove the point I am making—that no public disquiet has been expressed on this matter, whatever the principal cause of the Bill.

Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter (Kingston-upon-Thames): At an earlier stage I quoted to the House a letter sent by the Council of the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames, with the support of Labour councillors, objecting to this Measure.

Mr. Lubbock: We are not talking about organisations. What the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for

St. Marylebone said earlier was that people felt strongly about being deprived of their democratic rights. He has not made out a case by quoting the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames. I know that it is composed of people—[Laughter.]—but they are people with a political axe to grind, and so are those whom the hon. Gentleman the Member for Southgate (Mr. Berry) quoted. The man in the street, the ordinary elector, has not protested during the whole of the Committee stage. The right hon. and learned Gentleman did not deal with the point that the Conservative Party generally, quite apart from individual constituencies, could have raised the matter as early as the correspondence with the London Boroughs Association or at the time of my Question to the Home Secretary on 28th April.
It is very significant, and more important perhaps than the right hon. Lady may think, that no objection was made to this minute at the time and that it was only very much later—and I believe her account of this; it has the ring of truth—that objections were subsequently raised by Alderman Jordan and others in a bit of esprit d'escalier, designed to fit in with the Conservative Party's political opposition to the Bill.
As the right hon. Lady pointed out, they had fair warning that the Bill would be introduced, when the Home Secretary replied, in a very accommodating way, to a Question put to him by me on 28th April. I asked him what consideration he had given to postponing the borough elections for a year. In my supplementary I put various considerations to him which I knew were in the minds of the London Boroughs Association at that time. Presumably, hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite could have had the same information if they had cared to make inquiries of their colleagues on the Association. Yet there was not a peep out of them, not a single cheep, at least not until well after the Summer Recess.
That makes me a little suspicious of their motives in prolonging the discussion on the Bill—

Mr. Hogg: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman would care to correct what he has said, but it is within my clear recollection that shortly before the


Summer Recess, on 4th August, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) raised this question in a strongly controversial way and was supported by myself and my other hon. Friends representing London constituencies. The hon. Member for Orpington is trying to say that nothing was said until long after the Summer Recess.

Mr. Lubbock: I accept that correction, but there is a long time between 28th April and 4th August. One could go back even further than 28th April, to the meeting of the Special Committee which was as early as 28th January. Since the Conservatives were represented then they could have raised it at that time.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) is on a real point here. I gave fairly clear notice to the House, in reply to a Question on 28th April, that I was considering this change. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman complains that he was not consulted it would have been useful if he had made his position clear during the three and a half months which passed between April and August.

Mr. Hogg: Is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that he ever did consult us?

Mr. Lubbock: As someone once said, if I might be allowed to intervene in my own speech may I say that I am sure that this matter could be further pursued. It was noticeable that the right hon. and learned Gentleman did not answer this point when he spoke, following the right hon. Lady. She pointed out that he had had the opportunity of doing so in the months following my Question of 28th April, when the matter was made fairly plain and yet no action was taken by the Conservative Party until 4th August, shortly before the Summer Recess.
In a short debate I do not intend to rehearse the reasons why the Bill should be accepted by the House. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) has expressed mystification in the Daily Mail as to why the Liberals support the Bill. I have explained at considerable length, on two occasions our attitude and I can only think that his mind must have been

wandering at the time. A clear case has been made out by the London Boroughs Association, by the Government Front Bench, and if we look at this impartially there is no democratic principle at stake.
If we are to talk about democracy in Greater London I wonder why it is that hon. Gentlemen on this side of the House do not complain about the Greater London multi-member constituencies, which mean that if one has a bare majority say in the London Borough of Bromley, for the Conservative Party, as is the case at the moment, then the Conservatives get all four councillors elected, in spite of the fact that the Labour and Liberal Parties in the borough each poll about a quarter of the total and ought, therefore, to be entitled to one councillor each. It is the same in every other area.
Take Enfield—

Mr. Hogg: On a point of order. Every hon. Member, including the right hon. Lady, were very strictly called to order for going outside the ambit of what was in the Bill. I am wondering how far we can go on the exact composition of the Greater London Council's representation in Enfield.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right. The debate is going rather wide. I understand that the right hon. Lady was allowed to mention some of these matters, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will come back to the Third Reading and then we can all say what is required.

Mr. Lubbock: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I strayed outside of the rules of order, which I am sure you are more capable of interpreting than the right hon. and learned Member.
If I may finish the sentence, I was saying that in the Borough of Enfield we have a situation where the Labour Party control the borough and yet the Conservatives elect all three members of the G.L.C. If the Conservatives are looking for defects in the democratic system of Greater London, perhaps they would address themselves to this situation, which is far more serious than the postponement of borough elections for one year.
It is my firm opinion that this postponement will be for the convenience of electors in Greater London, and that they


will find it much easier to direct their attention to the issues involved in the Greater London Council's election next year, when these can be presented, uncluttered by a vast range of borough responsibilities, which they will have to deal with one year later. It is found in constituencies where there are urban district and county council elections in the same year, as was the case in Orpington before we became part of Greater London, that it is necessary for candidates and their political helpers to do very much more explanation to the electors on the doorstep than is the case when one has only one election at a time. The set-up becomes much more complicated because of the proximity of urban district and rural council elections on the one hand and the county council elections on the other.
This is not just a question of convenience of local authorities or the convenience of police forces, although I am surprised that that has not been mentioned. We depend very much upon the police forces during the operations of elections and with the present state of the police force, I do not think that it would be a negligible factor if we were to take them from their duties for the whole of one day in two successive months. I do not attach great importance to this.
Basically, the reason why the Bill should be supported is because it is for the convenience of electors, and it is right that the borough elections and the Greater London Council elections should be held in different years, not just from 1970 onwards but during 1967 as well.

5.5 p.m.

Mr. Ivor Richard: May I say, with the greatest respect, how much I enjoyed the speech of the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), I listened to it, as I always listen to him, with great interest and a very great deal of attention, although with some amusement, because naturally enough, there is always some amusement in a speech made by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. I thought that a noun which summed up what we had this afternoon would be vintage "Hoggery." It is a little difficult to define that particular noun and as I was waiting to be called I thought, since

I had invented it, how I could best define it. It seemed to me that "Hoggery" deserves a place in the Oxford Dictionary, defined as constitutional trumpeting of a high order, usually delivered at full volume, and almost, invariably designed to conceal an electoral motive.
I must admire the right hon. and learned Gentleman's skill in doing this. I admire the skill of the Tory Party generally in doing this, for no one is more skilled in the art of wrapping up electoral motives in constitutional principles than the right hon. and learned Gentleman on the Front Bench opposite. There is the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. lain Macleod), and the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) but the king of them all is the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for St. Marylebone. Yet, having listened to everything that he said this afternoon what did it all come to?
To look at the history of this matter, this started off, almost as an agreed matter of convenience between the parties, if not in this House, at any rate in London. At the beginning of this year the Conservative, Labour and the Liberal Parties in the London boroughs, all seemed to be generally agreed that it would be a good idea, and a matter of great convenience for the London electorate, if the borough elections were to be postponed for 12 months and that they be not held in the same year. What is happening now? We have spent one and a half days in Committee, most of a day on Second Reading, and we are now adding a half a day on Third reading.
I suggest that the reason is that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen have now discovered that there are votes in this issue for their party at the next borough elections in London—or so they think. Let me pose a question to the House. If the Conservative Party felt that the issue of comprehensive schools in the London boroughs would lose them votes next year instead of, as they mistakenly believe, gaining them votes, is it really believed that we would have spent two and a half days in discussing this trivial little Measure?
Does anyone believe that if the party opposite did not think that it was able to campaign in the outer London


boroughs during 1967 on comprehensive schools, and win votes by it, we would be so concerned about this Bill tonight? I do not believe it. I believe that what has happened here is that the party opposite has decided, I think mistakenly, that there are votes in this issue and that, having decided that, we have now had two and a half days complete waste of the House of Commons' time, taken up by an attempt on the part of the party opposite to gain an electoral advantage from what is and what was agreed to be, a matter of convenience to the London electorate as a whole.
It is an odd constitutional principle which the Conservatives apparently enunciate thus, saying that the Government, far from regarding the views of the majority of the London boroughs, should instead disregard the views of the majority of the boroughs and regard the views of part of the minority. It is an odd constitutional principle which says that we shall pay no attention to what most of the London boroughs say, but we shall only pay attention to what some, not all, of the Conservative boroughs, say.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman dismisses the safe Conservative boroughs like Westminster as of no account. I do not see why. If the constitutional principle is valid for Conservative boroughs in outer London, it should be valid for those in the centre, like the one he represents, or the Cities of London and Westminster. If it is a valid principle for people in Brent and Ealing, if they are being grossly deprived of their constitutional rights, why is it not such a great principle for the centre—

Mr. Hogg: The hon. Member is forgetting the obvious point—that those who are being deprived of their rights are the voters, not the boroughs.

Mr. Richard: Of course, but when the right hon. Gentleman enunciates a great constitutional principle, if it is such, geography must not be taken into account. He cannot disregard the views of the central London boroughs, some of which are those of his own party, in favour of the outer London boroughs. This is the fallacy of his argument.
I do not believe that there is any great feeling in London generally against post

poning the elections until 1968. People in my constituency to whom I have spoken are very much in favour of it as a matter of practical convenience. I should have thought that the one set of people who would be screaming loudest about this are the Conservative electors in my borough of Hammersmith, if they felt themselves about to be disfranchised in 1957 because they would not then have an opportunity of turning out the borough council.
My experience precisely resembles that of the hon. Member for Orpington. I have not had one letter. I have not been lobbied by one Conservative in my borough who is against this Bill. If a great constitutional principle were at stake, and so many people in London were being deprived of something for which our forefathers fought or which was enshrined in the Bill of Rights, I should have expected one or two of them to have taken a 1s. 2d. bus ride to send in a green card to their M.P. It has not happened to me, and I do not think that any of my hon. Friends have had a contrary experience.
There have, of course, been expressions of Conservative opinion. In the last debate, we heard about a remarkable petition which all sorts of voters had signed protesting that their constitutional rights were being eroded. However, on closer examination, one finds that some of the people who signed it came from Bournemouth, Worthing, and various other parts of the South-East of England—good Conservative boroughs, all of them—[Interruption.] This was said in Committee. I remember interrupting the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames on this point.
Many people from well outside London signed this great petition, all good Conservatives. They did not feel that their own constitutional rights were being eaten away. They were not the people who were being deprived of their votes. Most affected were the people in the Greater London area. They have apparently remained unmoved, whereas good Conservative constitutionalists away from London have been extremely vocal—

Mr. Molloy: Is my hon. Friend being fair to the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg)? As


I understand, he received one letter in protest from Orpington, and lost it.

Mr. Richard: I would of course not wish to take a false point—

Mr. Berry: The hon. Member must recollect that, in the last debate, I mentioned three examples given by his right hon. Friend, all of which were of school teachers living outside my borough, but teaching at schools in the borough. Does he suggest that they had no right to sign that petition?

Mr. Richard: Of course not. What I do suggest is that much of the agitation which we have heard about in the Greater London area has been whipped up by the Conservative Party for an electoral motive. That is what I suggest: it is perfectly simple.
I do not believe in the constitutional trumpetings of the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone. They are very impressive—indeed the first time I heard them I was very impressed—but if one considers what has really happened, one sees that what started off as an agreed convenience between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party by which, in Greater London—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Hon. Gentlemen say "No", but we have heard a lot about the minute, and about the committee at which, apparently, the Conservative members first of all agreed unanimously and then challenged the minute at the next meeting. But the minute was not altered. I understand that nobody else at the meeting agreed with the three Conservatives who protested that the previous meeting had not been unanimous. When they made their first protest, nobody else at the meeting agreed that their recorded agreement was wrong.
Therefore, if one takes that incident together with the fact that it took a long time for hon. Gentlemen opposite to wake up to the fact that the Bill was anything other than non-controversial. If one then considers the way in which party feeling has been whipped up about the Bill in the last three months, culminating in the 2½ days which we have had to spend on the Bill, then my views, suspicious though they may be, of the motives of the party opposite are very probably justified.

5.15 p.m.

Mr. Philip Goodhart: The Government have so far advanced

three arguments for changing the present arrangement for election—first, that it would lead to confusion, second, that it would lead to apathy among the voters, and, third, that the present arrangements are administratively inconvenient.
In defence of the Bill, the Minister of State referred to an Amendment about the system of elections which was moved in Committee on the original London Government Bill by my friend and former colleague Mr. Robert Jenkins. It is perhaps worth recalling that, in that discussion of the election arrangements for Greater London, no Labour Member—in fact, no Member of any party—referred to confusion, apathy or administrative inconvenience. The two Labour Members who spoke based their arguments solely on the fact that it would be difficult for the various councils in Greater London in the three years between 1964 and 1967 to make sufficient impact on the problems or on their new electorates.
Certainly, one could make a very good case for saying that many of the London borough councils have not been able to tackle the problems facing them or to make impact on the electorate, but this argument has not been put by the Government. Therefore, faced with the fact that the arguments which now seem so pressing were simply not mentioned at all by hon. Members opposite in 1963, one is left, after all the discussion, with the strong suspicion that the sole reason for the Bill is to cheat a number of electors in a number of marginal constituencies out of a fairer opportunity of expressing their views on the system of comprehensive education, before that matter passes beyond their reach for all time.
I well remember the speech of the then "Shadow" Minister of Housing, the right hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart) on the Third Reading of the original London Government Bill. He said that if a Labour Government were elected in time they would destroy the Bill altogether and that, if not, they would seek the earliest possible opportunity to amend it so as to alter the balance of power between the boroughs and the G.L.C. This is the first Bill of the Government amending that original Bill. It does not destroy that Bill—or even significantly amend it—or change the balance of power. All that this little Bill does is cheat the electorate.

5.21 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Berry: Unlike my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon, North-West (Mr. Frederic Harris), I cannot claim to be in a virginal state over the Bill, but, in view of certain remarks which have been made, I should like to comment further.
The hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) referred to the Bill as a complete waste of time. I suggest that to refer to a very important Bill, affecting the largest city in the world and depriving its electors of their rights in local borough elections by a year, on which we spend two and a half or three days, as a waste of time is a disgraceful description of the Parliamentary timetable—

Mr. Richard: The hon. Gentleman is not quite accurate. What I described as as waste of time was the conduct of the Opposition, not the Bill.

Mr. Berry: That reinforces my point. It is all right for the Government to allow time for a Bill, but not for the Opposition to spend time discussing it.
The hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) has, twice during the last three weeks [HON. MEMBERS: "Where is he?"] He has left the Chamber, like the rest of his party. He said that there had been no letters to hon. Members about the Bill, and the hon. Member for Barons Court followed that point. That is nonsense. I can quote, not from my earlier quotation, but from a letter in my local paper in Southgate last week, which was mildly critical of me for not having done as much as I should to criticise what was described as a little Bill. I have done as much as I can. Hon. Members opposite are putting their heads in the sand if they think that the public in London do not realise what the Bill is doing. They will have this borne in upon them in May 1968, at the latest.
We have gone back today to the bogus argument of hon. Gentlemen opposite, that the Bill is intended to avoid elections being held on the same day. I had hoped that we had got away from that. That is not what the Bill is about. It is to prevent next year's borough elections being held in May of next year. They are not being held on the same day next year. They would have been in 1970. I hold no brief for them being held on

the same day in 1970, but that is not the point.
The point is that the Bill is intended to put off elections which would have been held next year in a completely different month from the G.L.C. elections. The Under-Secretary of State referring in Committee to the last elections, said that education and housing were the two major items in the G.L.C. elections. He said that the public had had their chance of voting on that. I put it to him that the public in my area had their chance and voted in those G.L.C. elections in favour of the Conservative Party. That, therefore, makes complete nonsense of his argument.
The hon. Member also tried to make out that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North (Sir E. Bullus) and I were disagreeing with each other on the question of consultation. I wish to correct him on that, too. My hon. and gallant Friend was making the point that the Minister of State, Department of Education and Science, was receiving deputations and addressing meetings on this subject. I was making the point that there was a complete lack of consultation with the parents of the children who would be affected. They were vastly different points. No question of disagreement between my hon. and gallant Friend and I had arisen.
Through no fault of mine, "that" petition has again been mentioned As the Minister of State is in her place, I assure her that I have now traced the signatory, who is in Bournemouth. As I suspected, that signatory had recently moved from the borough; and I am grateful for the interest which the right hon. Lady has shown in this matter and for the publicity which she has given to the petition.
Although I was not in the House prior to the 1964 General Election and was, therefore, unable to take part in the discussions on the London Government Act, I assure the House that I would not have supported a Measure to have elections on the same day. I will not go into the reasons, which have already been ably put forward. It is preferable for people who have elected their councillors for a given period to know that those councillors will be in office for that period. The electors should not suddenly find that the period


is to be extended, without their having any further say in the matter.
On several occasions the Bill has been referred to as a "modest little Measure". Modesty and size do not necessarily go together and the fact that it is a short Bill does not make it any the less serious or any the less undemocratic. The Home Secretary, who is chiefly responsible for the Bill—although I wonder how happy he is about it now—when not spending his time on Government business, spends it far more usefully for the general public in his extremely distinguished rôle as a biographer.
I quote from the right hon. Gentleman's recent excellent book, in which he says about Mr. Asquith:
He had always been faithful to liberal humane ideas and to civilised even fastidious standards of political behaviour.
In presenting this Measure, both he and the Liberal Party, which now supports it, are far lower than any of those standards and the right hon. Gentleman is himself not worthy of them.

5.32 p.m.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: The hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard) began his speech by referring to what he called "Hoggery". From his definition of it, I gather that one commits "Hoggery" if one makes an interesting and worth-while speech. If that is "Hoggery", I hope that I am often charged with it.
As the hon. Member for Barons Court spoke, I formed the view that one could commit "Richardry". The "Richardry" which he committed was, first, to claim a unanimity of thought that had never existed—that the Conservative and Labour members, at a meeting, were unanimous and always had been—and, secondly, to disregard the views of a minority, even a relatively large one.
The real point behind the Bill is much wider and more important than the effect it will have on the London boroughs or on any elections to be held in London. We are discussing a 100 per cent. House of Commons principle, which is that the rules should not be changed without all the people who must adhere to them agreeing to the change.
It is no good the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) chastising my hon. Friend the Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) and me for speaking on

these vital matters, because we do not represent London constituencies. If we want Parliament and local government to work, the machinery of electing representatives to those bodies must be above any sort of suspicion. People must not even begin to think that that machinery is being tampered with for partisan reasons. Despite all the talk during the long Committee stage on the Bill, as the Measure stands it appears that the machinery for elections has been tampered with for partisan reasons. Those reasons seem to be that the Treasury Bench wants to get a full comprehensive education system on the move before the parents who do not agree with it can have a say in the matter.
Apart from the importance of the question of comprehensive education as against preserving independent schools, as many parents and ratepayers would like to happen, we must consider this vital question of ensuring that the machinery of elections is above suspicion. If any Government discover that something that is vital is being injured because they cannot get agreement on an alteration of the rules—something fundamental to the country generally, or, as in this case, to London—then perhaps there would be some excuse for attempting to break this vital principle. But that situation does not exist.
What would happen if the Government had the decency to withdraw the Bill? The answer is that the elections would take place 12 months later, and that is all. There is nothing fundamental about that. The fundamental point is that the elections are being put forward. Right outside the effect that that will have on the elections in London, I appeal, without apologising for not representing a London constituency, to the Government to keep to a principle which is vital to our electoral system. They should not alter the machinery by which elections work without having the agreement of both sides and without it having appeared in their manifesto prior to the General Election. This House could not work if the Government of the day decided to ride roughshod over our accepted rules and procedures. I am certain that local councils could not work in similar circumstances, either.
I was not impressed by the point made by the hon. Member for Barons Court when he referred to protests not having


been made in a sustained way. He referred to a meeting and a minute passed at it. Is he suggesting that because something of fundamental importance is discovered later, it should be ignored simply because the matter was not raised at the time?

Mr. T. L. Iremonger: The electorate is represented in this House by hon. Members and we are making the representations.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: I agree with my hon. Friend. It was a feeble excuse put forward by the hon. Member for Barons Court, who suggested that because there was not an instant reaction trumpeted by the members of the committee when the matter was first mentioned—and we do not know in what form it was first mentioned—there is no need to protest now. I sat on a local council for 16 years and many things went through at meetings which I did not recognise to be important until later, when I read the minutes. Often at that point, after the matters had been first raised, I objected. If one misses a point one's mistake is propounded if one does not, at the earliest opportunity, attempt to put the matter right.
There can be no doubt that there are extremely strong feelings existing on this issue. Hon. Gentlemen opposite should stop talking about a small minority, because the division of view is nearly equal. That being so, the Home Secretary has no title to alter the machinery in this way. I therefore appeal to him, even at this late stage, to withdraw the Bill. Alternatively, he could take steps to put the matter right in another place so that we may feel that the old systems are not being jettisoned merely for an immediate party advantage concerning education.
I cannot accept the view of the hon. Member for Orpington that the only time one can pass legislation is when one has received many letters on the subject. Are we to have Government by post, or are we to make up our own minds by representing our constituents? In any case, it seems that the hon. Member for Orpington can never be satisfied. Although he asks for letters, when my hon. Friends remind him that letters have been received, he refuses to take them into account.
One of my hon. Friends said that he had received letters, the purport of which

he gave to the House, but the hon. Member for Orpington discounted them by saying that they were from an organisation and not from a man in the street. This means that the woman writing a letter to her hon. Member would not stand a chance—

Mr. Lubbock: Really!

Sir Harmar Nicholls: —because she could not be called a man in the street. The hon. Member for Orpington would, therefore, discount her protests. Presumably, if Mrs. Smith sent in a letter he would not accept that, either, since she is not a man.
I hope that my hon. Friends who represent London constituencies will continue to press their protests upon the Government, remembering that it is fundamentally wrong for the electoral laws and rules to be changed unless the Government have the support of both sides. This Bill certainly does not have the support of both sides and will only weaken our electoral machinery. It will weaken the comprehensive education system which the Government are aiming to achieve and the trust that the electors have in our electoral system. I hope, therefore, that even at this late stage the Government will withdraw the Bill.

5.37 p.m.

Mr. William Molloy: I would award the accolade for supreme banality to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls), although it was a bit thick of him to begin by holding forth on the fine principles enshrined in democracy—in our electoral machinery and the need for people to have the right to express their views—and to go on to hope that the views of the ordinary people, decided by their elected representatives in this House, might be changed in that great democratic institution which we call "another place". What a ridiculous thing to suggest.
The next remarkable point made by the hon. Gentleman was that nothing should be changed unless there is agreement between the parties in this House. Is he aware that that would rule out all other forms of political life in Britain, particularly those which have no representation in this House? Hon. Members who have studied the evolution of Britain's


constitution will agree that history has shown that many great changes in our democracy have come about as a result of the actions of people who have had no representation in Parliament.

Sir Harmar Nicholls: The hon. Gentleman obviously did not listen to what I said. I said that if we are to change the rules in this House, that should be done by agreement between both sides, but that, in terms of changing the rules for local government elections, that should be done only with the agreement of both sides connected with those elections. That was the point I had intended to make.

Mr. Molloy: It depends on what the hon. Gentleman meant by "both sides". Either he meant both sides in this House or both sides in various councils in the Greater London area.
In any case, the hon. Gentleman was on very weak ground indeed, because in a number of boroughs—some Conservative and some Labour controlled—there has been agreement about this. Hon. Gentlemen opposite are, therefore, revealing the third face of the Conservative Party—the face which is turned towards comprehensive education. That has come out clearly throughout this discussion. It is an idea which, hon. Gentlemen opposite think, provides them with an opportunity to say that the Bill is trying to push the matter through without giving the electors a chance to express second thoughts.
This is putting it very crudely. I want to be fair to the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod). He put it fairly when he said that in many boroughs the argument is about the particular scheme, not about the principle of comprehensive education. If he would like to contradict me, I should be prepared to give way to him. That is what he inferred. It was an honest thing to say. Certainly, in the London Borough of Ealing the principle of comprehensive education was accepted by all three political parties in the General Election and the G.L.C. and local elections. This is the point which the right hon. Gentleman has made from time to time, and which I make, too. I think that the right hon. Gentleman and I are at one on this. There has, however, been argument about the particular schemes.
I have examined this matter, and have discovered that the scheme envisaged in the London Borough of Ealing, introduced by the Labour-controlled council, is not particularly liked by the Conservative opposition. But in other parts of the country the position is the reverse: the Labour Party does not like what is being introduced by Conservative councils. There is nothing illogical about this, because the circumstances of two different parts of London can accommodate both views or allow opposition to them.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I agree that the argument is not about comprehensive education. I have a very good comprehensive school in my constituency which was started by a Tory Middlesex County Council. Nor is the argument about particular schemes. The argument is about whether the electorate should have the right to vote on these matters.

Mr. Molloy: These schemes are being introduced not by a council which stole power and which invaded the town hall and said, "We are the authority", but by London borough councils which offered themselves for election.

Mr. Iremonger: rose—

Mr. Molloy: There have been occasions in the past when Parliament has changed the rules concerning local government elections. There is nothing new in this.
As I said on Second Reading, there has been a great debate on this matter among Liberals, Tories and Socialists and people of other parties, and the argument has cut right across political lines. I freely admit that ther are Labour councillors who are not enamoured of the Bill. There are Conservative councillors who are very much in favour of the Bill, and not only on the Westminster Council.
The Government's duty is to assess the situation and to take full cognisance of the views of all bodies interested in the proposition, whether they be administrators, like the town councillors, the elected representatives of the people as far as their views can be ascertained, or the people. When this has been done, it is the duty and right of the Government to introduce a measure which they feel


meets the situation and which can be discussed by the House. This is what has been done. It is the proper way to deal with any situation like the one with which we are faced.

Mr. Iremonger: The hon. Gentleman has left the point on which I wished to interrupt him. He has expounded an extremely dangerous doctrine. He made a remark about councils having been elected. For how long had they been elected?

Mr. Molloy: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned that point, because one Member opposite seemed to think that if a councillor is elected for three years he has no right to die, to resign or to withdraw. This is an absurd attitude.
What has happened is precisely the same as happened when the Conservative Party decided that democratically it might never get political control of the London County Council, and that the only way in which it could get control was to find an administrative excuse to modernise it and then destroy it and then it could take over political control. But that did not work.
This Bill is no way the same as that Measure. It is not of the same size. What is more important, it has not the villainous political motives which lay behind that Measure. This is the point which hurts. Right hon. Members and hon. Members opposite realise that this is a telling Measure, that this is the kernel of the truth—[Laughter.]—and, therefore, they try to drown it with nonsensical laughter. But it is there, and they cannot deny it; no hon. Member opposite has jumped up to deny it.
When we discuss issues like this it is right and proper that every possible example should be quoted and that a number of hypothetical instances should be quoted in the peradventure of some of them materialising. But during the various stages of the Bill we have listened to the same arguments repeated in different forms time and again. They have been hardly related to the ideals behind the Bill. One can only come to the conclusion that either right hon. and hon. Members opposite have very little knowledge of local government,

or that they are concerned to give a picture that politics has descended into some form of Tammany Hall politics, which they are bound to know in their hearts is quite untrue. If they felt in this way, many of them might be tempted to support us on the issue of the lack of democracy in the City of London.
I have not heard mention of that by the great democrats on the benches opposite—not a single word. No one has defended it. All that we have had is the incredible statement of the hon. Member for Peterborough who, when he was talking about the principles of democracy, expressed the hope that that great democratic institution, the other place, would help to save democracy in this country. That summed up the Opposition's attitude, which has been tawdry and banal. If anything has been done to reduce the standard of political discussion, which must affect the principles of democracy, it has been the ridiculous attitude of the Opposition to the Bill.
Many Conservative as well as Labour councillors in London know full well that the Bill is not merely a good thing for the democracy of London; it is a good thing for efficient democracy which we are trying to achieve in London and which we hope to maintain. I hope that in the great political battles which will take place when the Bill has been passed we will realise that it has not harmed the democratic structure of local government, but has made a great contribution towards enhancing it.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. William Roots: I expect that the House, like myself, was somewhat blinded by that burst of clarity of thought with which the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) realised that the Royal Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames was comprised of people, but some hon. Members may have been surprised that he could find no point of principle in the Bill. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has left the Chamber. I thought that I might be able to help him. When one thinks for a moment one realises that it is not altogether surprising, because I do not suppose that anyone in the House can find any issue of principle running right through the Liberal Party, so on that aspect he may be at a disadvantage.
I think that possibly the most creditable aspect of the Bill was the extremely unhappy terms, and the manner, in which the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary introduced it. I think that it was significant, and it did him credit, that he appeared to lack the enthusiasm with which he speaks when dealing with those extremely important prisoners who have escaped his grasp.
We on this side of the House, or at any rate myself, regard this as a major issue of principle. It involves the extension of the term of election of mem-members of democratic bodies. There may be reasons for doing that, but it is clear that it is a major matter of principle whether we do, or do not, do that, and I cannot think that there are many hon. Members who do not recognise this. In fairness to the Home Secretary, it must he said that he never suggested that it was a triviality. Indeed, what did appear was that he recognised that it was not a triviality and that, having undertaken to sponsor the Bill, he realised what an extremely weak case he had been furnished with to carry out that task.
What have we had to support this proposal? We have been given as a reason for it the view expressed by a committee of town clerks, and the Minister of State appeared to rely on this as an important argument. However, the Government were driven off that. It was clearly evident that the town clerks were not addressing themselves to this major matter of principle of the deferment of democratic elections.
The right hon. Lady then spent a lot of time delving into the minutes of meetings held by several bodies and different aldermen in the Borough of Enfield, but as they were not the same aldermen as those with whom my right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. Iain Macleod) was dealing, that did not carry us a great deal further. The only surprising thing was that if the hon. Lady did really intend to investigate the whole thing she did not make inquiries from the aldermen who are alleged to have protested and who are members of that body.
But that again is not a reason for carrying out a major change of principle in elections, whether or not somebody protested, or was going to at the next

opportunity, or was ill, or was there, or was not there, or forgot, or anything else. What we have to ask ourselves is: what reasons have been given for postponing the elections? I ask hon. Members to consider what reasons the Government have advanced. Some reasons have been given for not having elections on the same day, but what valid reasons have been given for interfering with a major matter of principle and carrying out an alteration which, admittedly, is confined to Greater London at the moment—a matter of principle which will have the greatest possible repercussions, or could have?
Surely this is the case which needs to be made overwhelmingly before the House consents to a Measure of this type, and so far the Home Secretary, to his credit, has not said anything to contradict that. Neither he nor his hon. Friends has been able to produce any valid reasons for doing it.
As against that, they are utterly unable to meet the undeniable instances which have been given from this side of the House of practices and policies in several boroughs. I am referring, not to the comprehensive school issue, but to the malpractices in many boroughs. No reason has been given why the people in these boroughs, members of the public, should be denied the right to change the council if they wish. They might wish to endorse the action which has been taken. I very much doubt it, but no answer has been given. There has been no answer to the point that where boroughs are education authorities they should be given the right to vote in accordance with the present law. In other words, the law should not be changed to stop them from voting on schemes which are still under consideration.
Finally in that context, one has the whole issue whether people should be enabled to express their opinions about the policies being carried out by their councils, be they boroughs with large Conservative majorities, or with large Labour majorities, or marginals. A number of instances have been given in addition to what I might call the hair-raising one. I gave one example in the Royal Borough of Kingston, namely, a challenge to the housing policy, which I am sure the majority party will wish


to meet, and, indeed, has been challenged to meet, but if this Bill goes through it will be prevented from doing do.
Nobody save the hon. Member for Orpington has sought to deny that the extension of the period of the borough council elections is a major matter of principle. No valid reason has been brought forward in favour of any change. Even at this late stage it cannot be right for the House to approve this Measure. I sincerely hope that both sides of the House will recognise that, and that the Bill will not be given its Third Reading.

5.58 p.m.

Mr. A. H. Macdonald: I was here at the beginning of the debate, but then had to leave for a short while. I returned in time to hear the concluding remarks of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls), and I was rather sorry that I had missed all that he said, because what I heard sounded rather interesting.
I think that I heard the hon. Member say that we should not pass a Measure of this kind without there being agreement between both sides. I hope that I have interpreted him correctly. This is an interesting thought on which I should like to dwell for a moment, with particular reference to what has happened in the several London boroughs concerned, because in many, though not all the London boroughs, agreement has been reached between both sides on the propriety of this Measure.
It is true that there is disagreement in other boroughs, and I hope that I am not being too cynical when I associate that fact with the parallel fact that it is in those boroughs that members of the party opposite, see, or think they see, some political advantage in this Measure not going through. It is, therefore, very difficult to resist the conclusion that the opposition to this Measure from the other side of the House is opposition for the sake of some political party advantage, and I throw back at them the charge which they have made, that we are doing this for some political advantage.
If this political question were detached —as it can be seen to be detached in those boroughs where there is no question of party political advantage—it is reasonable to suppose that agreement of the

kind suggested by the hon. Member for Peterborough might be reached. On those grounds, there is adequate justification for considering this Measure.
A curious argument has been advanced that voters should be given an opportunity to vote upon certain Measures. The proposal of comprehensive education is the one chiefly raised in this instance. I was always a little surprised to hear this argument advanced by hon. Members opposite because I had understood it to be their constitutional doctrine that government by referendum is not the system that we operate in this country. That is my opinion, and I do not understand how a decision on a certain issue, such as comprehensive education, can be adequately expressed by voting in this way.
It may be that I am unique among hon. Members representing London constituencies in that mine is split almost exactly in half between two boroughs—one half being in the Conservative-controlled London Borough of Bromley and the other in the Labour-controlled Borough of Bexley. On this issue of comprehensive education which was fully discussed at the General Election, I feel that a majority in both halves of my constituency is probably rather cautiously in favour of the principle of comprehensive education.
I have had a number of letters which, while accepting the principle, criticise certain points of detail. Some criticise details of the plan put forward by Bromley Council and some those of the plan put forward by Bexley Council. In the event of an election in the manner proposed by hon. Members opposite how it is practicable and possible for electors, by casting their vote, to express the view that they are in favour of the plan for comprehensive educatioin in principle but do not like its detail? I do not understand the practicability of the doctrine that they are advancing.
In common with every other hon. Member, I suppose, masses of letters come to me commenting on Measures which the Government and borough councils are introducing. As I am concerned with two borough councils I receive a double set of letters of that kind. I have had letters upon a variety of subject, but none concerned with this Measure. Therefore, I cannot accept the


suggestion of hon. Members opposite that there is a passionate surge of feeling in respect of this proposal, and I am, therefore, forced back to the conclusion that hon. Members opposite oppose it because they think that they can see some political advantage in so doing. I say "they think" because the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt)—whom I am glad to see in his place, because he has the chance to speak after me; it was the other way round in the Second Reading debate —will know that at a recent by-election in his constituency his party lost a seat. I therefore emphasise the words, "they think".
I cannot be satisfied that this political advantage is as real as they make out, and I am looking forward with confidence to elections to the Greater London Council. I detach from my mind any question of political advantage. This is a desirable Measure, and it has been evidenced in boroughs where no political controversy is involved that it is an acceptable Measure to both sides. I therefore see no reason why it should not proceed.

6.5 p.m.

Mr. John Hunt: I shall not follow a great deal of what the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Macdonald) has said. He put forward the view, however, that my hon. Friends and I were arguing in favour of a referendum. In fact, we are arguing that electors in the Greater London area should be allowed to go through the traditional democratic processes of the ballot box so that they may say what they think about their local councils. This opportunity is being denied to them by the Bill.
The hon. Member referred to a by-election in my constituency, but surely the fact that my party happened by chance to lose that by-election underlines how altruistic I am in my opposition to this Measure.
The right hon. Lady referred to the attendance of hon. Members on this side of the House—

Miss Bacon: I did not. It is immaterial. I would have referred to it if I had thought of it, but I do not think that I did.

Mr. Hunt: When the right hon. Lady reads HANSARD I think she will find that she made some reference to the fact that not many hon. Members on this side of the House were interested in the debate. I hope that the empty benches behind her—which were only partially replenished, for a time, by the hon. Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard)—are a reflection of the sense of guilt and shame which hon. Members opposite feel about the Government's determination to press forward with this unsavoury and undemocratic Bill.
The right hon. Lady spent a long time in a very short speech arguing the case for borough and G.L.C. elections being held in different years. But, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate (Mr. Berry) said, this argument has already been accepted. Our case is that this situation could easily and democratically have been achieved by changing the future term of borough councillors elected from 1967 onwards, rather than by tampering with the existing term of sitting councillors.
We believe that councillors elected for a set period of three years should not be allowed to sit for a day longer. Our opposition to the Bill was referred to earlier by the hon. Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson) as a great deal of "huff and puff". What he and others who speak like him fail to appreciate when they use foolish phrases of that kind is that local democracy means something to hon. Members on this side of the House, even if it no longer counts for much on the Labour and Liberal benches.
We still hold the old-fashioned and seemingly out-dated view that having elected our councillors for three years it is immoral and indefensible for any Government arbitrarily to extend that term of office without any reference to the people most concerned, namely, the ratepayers and electors. This is the nub of our antagonism and opposition to the Bill and, with respect to the right hon. Lady, it is something she totally ignored in her thoroughly inadequate speech.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Barons Court has now left the Chamber. I felt that he made an arrogant speech. He seemed to be saying that the Parliamentary Labour Party knows what is


best for the electors and that it is thoroughly frivolous and irresponsible for the Opposition to challenge what that party is seeking to do. I hope that he will not accuse me of committing "Hoggery". He seemed to be saying that "Hoggery" was something reserved for consenting Tory M.P.s in private. I hope that he will not accuse me of "Hoggery" when I say that we believe that a vital democratic principle is at stake here.
It is deplorable that 5 million electors throughout Greater London should be disfranchised next May and denied the opportunity to make their opinions known by their votes on a number of important issues, not merely to comprehensive education, as the hon. Member for Chislehurst said, but on all sorts of questions, including housing, rates and matters about which they feel passionately and in respect of which they want to record their opinions through the ballot boxes.
The right hon. Lady said that the local borough councils have been effective for only two years. Much preparatory work was done during 1964 and 1965. Each of the Greater London Borough councils ever since 1964 has been engaged on the mammoth task of implementing the London Government Act, 1963. The councils have done it with varying degrees of success. In areas such as my own Borough of Bromley these immense new powers and responsibilities have been discharged with wisdom and foresight. In other areas perhaps they have been discharged with less success. By now it is fair to claim that many early teething troubles have been overcome and that the councillors and council officials are settling down to their new responsibilities.
We believe that elections next May would have provided an appropriate opportunity for the electors of all these boroughs to renew the mandate of their sitting councillors, or else to decide, as they surely would have done in the case of boroughs such as Camden, Brent, Enfield and Hillingdon, that changes were necessary. What these electors will never forget or forgive is for this House to step in, as it is seeking to do tonight, and for reasons of short-term party political advantage deny them their political rights to go to the polls next year.
I am glad that the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) is in his place. I am sure that the electors of Greater London will be very puzzled, as I have been, by the attitude of the Parliamentary Liberal Party to the Bill, and, in particular, by the attitude taken to it by the hon. Gentleman who, with me, represents one of the component constituencies of the London Borough of Bromley.

Mr. Lubbock: They will not be, because I have taken the trouble to send out large numbers of my own Second Reading speech.

Mr. Hunt: I believe, with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), that it is a very sad day indeed for Liberalism when its representatives here renounce the principles and traditions of a once great party and lend themselves to the squalid purpose of aiding and abetting the manipulations of the London Labour Party. For the information of the hon. Member for Orpington, I shall take steps to see that that part of my speech is circulated in his constituency. 
I believe that the Bill was conceived by stealth and subterfuge and will ultimately bring shame and dishonour to all those who support it in the Lobby tonight. That is why we shall continue resolutely to oppose it.

6.13 p.m.

Mr. T. L. Iremonger: I know that the Secretary of State will want to wind up the debate soon, so I hope to sit down by twenty minutes past six, if that would not be unduly inconvenient to the House.
I feel bound to reiterate, even at this late stage, the very great misgiving with which I come to the Third Reading of the Bill. It deprives the electorate of the right to vote in elections promised to them in the House by an Act of Parliament. It extends the life of 32 borough councils elected for three years, but now given a reprieve, by an extra year.
This would be dangerous if no one minded, but it is absolutely inexcusable to do this when many people do mind it and have said so. Whether or not they have said so in letters to the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), whether or not they have said so in letters to us, or whether or not it is merely we here


who say so, the principle still remains that this is a bad and dangerous thing to do and something that the House should not let go by lightly. I think that it should be resisted. I still hope that the Secretary of State will, on consideration, decide that it would become him better to withdraw the Bill.
This principle applies to all electors in every local authority throughout the country and it applies also to the entire electorate and to the House. The principle underlying the Bill cannot be belittled simply because the Bill is about elections in London. The Bill is about tampering with the electoral system. The hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Molloy), who made a gallant if highly sophistical speech, said that he did not think that it was an idea of fundamental constitutional importance that constitutional change, because it is constitutional change, should be avoided unless there was general agreement. Mr. Speaker himself is presiding over Mr. Speaker's Conference on changing the electoral law. If the principle applies to that, it applies also to the holding of local government elections which have been fixed by the House in an Act of Parliament.
The hon. Member for Ealing, North made a good debating point which has been made from the other side on several occasions, but which I do not think should be allowed to pass on Third Reading. He said that, if we were accusing him and his right hon. and hon. Friends of gerrymandering, it lay ill in our mouths, because we had gerrymandered in a big way with the whole of the Local Government Act and all that was done subsequent to it. I do not think that should be allowed to pass, because it is a reflection not upon right hon. and hon. Members on this side of the House—our shoulders are broad enough to bear it—but upon the Royal Commission on Local Government in London, upon its distinguished chairman, upon its members, and upon the Report it made.
In so far as there was any constitutional principle involved in, or any party advantage to be gained from, the London Government Act, it was based entirely upon the recommendations of the Royal Commission. There were alterations, certainly, but they were not constitutional alterations. They were not alterations which gave any advantage to the Conser-

vative Party. If this was an effort by the Conservative Party to gerrymander and fix elections and electoral boundaries to their advantage, all that I can say is that it was the one really incompetent thing they did during their thirteen years of office.
The electoral boundaries were very radically changed by the town clerks, who were asked by the then Minister of Housing and Local Government to fix them. I should have thought that, if anything lies ill in anyone's mouth, it lies ill in the mouths of hon. Friends of the Home Secretary to say that town clerks fixing boundaries could possibly be suspected of doing it in anything other than the best interests of electors, because this whole Bill proceeds on the basis of the moral infallibility of town clerks in deciding whether we should have elections or not.
The hon. Member for Ealing, North protested that the same arguments had been repeated on Second Reading, in Committee, and on Third Reading. The hon. Gentleman derided the notion that we should state these arguments again and again. He referred, I thought rather touchingly—this was the only rather serious dialectical blunder in his speech—to the ideals behind the Bill. If these are ideals, it is the first time they have been referred to by any hon. Member opposite. The ideals are on this side of the House. The principles lie on this side of the House. If the arguments are repeated, they cannot be repeated often enough. I make no apology for repeating them again.
It is not that the electors of the Borough of Redbridge are particularly concerned to vote about the schemes for comprehensive education, about difficulties of car parking, about town centre redevelopment, about private and public development of housing, or about any of the other important issues. That is not what matters at all. It does not matter whether they want to vote about those things, whether they want to vote about other matters, or whether they want to vote about nothing at all. The fact is that they were promised in an Act of Parliament that they would have an opportunity to exercise their vote in three years' time. The three years are up next year. They should not be denied that opportunity now.
This is the fundamental constitutional principle. It ill becomes hon. Members opposite to object to hon. Members on this side who come from other parts of the country taking an interest in the Bill. The Bill most certainly refers to them as much as to anyone else. I think that it was the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Mr. Manuel) who objected that the Bill was about London and not about Scotland. I can assure him that it is about Scotland. Hon. Members opposite who think that this is a little Bill about London local government would do well to bear in mind the words of John Donne, who, when preaching from the pulpit of the ancient Gothic Cathedral of St. Paul, he advised his listeners that if they heard the passing bell they should
never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

6.20 p.m.

Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter (Kingston-upon-Thames): Even the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary's worst enemies would not accuse him of having shown any undue enthusiasm for this Measure. His appearances during our debates have, for understandable reasons, been intermittent, and the right hon. Lady the Minister of State, Home Office, assured us earlier today that the origin of the Bill was not to be found in the Home Office. I can well understand her desire to make that clear.
I must say that there have been moments during this debate when I have felt a great deal of sympathy for the Home Secretary. On the one hand, this Measure, for which we all know he was not in substance responsible, has been attacked as introducing a most unhappy precedent in the making of changes in electoral arrangements. Even more disturbing, no doubt, than my hon. Friend's powerful attacks, have been the attempts made to defend it by, above all, the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock). Indeed, I could not help feeling during the speech of the hon. Member that the Home Secretary, being a Balliol man, was muttering Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istiis, which, for the sake of the Liberal Party, I will translate as "For God's sake don't let Orpington support us"——

Mr. Lubbock: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I am a Balliol man? I read engineering there.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: This is a matter concerning the Home Secretary's and my own college which we have been sedulously trying to keep secret for a long time. I am only sorry that the hon. Gentleman has now disclosed this.
The only other support that I could see the Home Secretary received from his own side came, first, from his hon. Friend the Member for Barons Court (Mr. Richard), who described this as a trivial little Bill—rather a curious Measure on which a Home Secretary, in these days, should spend several Parliamentary days. He got support also from his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Stoke Newington and Hackney, North (Mr. Weitzman), who suggested that his constituents were incapable of doing what is done by every constituent in the counties in the United Kingdom. Those were hardly powerful supports for this Measure.
I take up at once the point made by the right hon. Gentleman himself. To put the matter in its accurate perspective, I must say that he intervened during the intervention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) during the speech of the hon. Member for Orpington. He then took up the point, as I understood it, that there had been no real objection to this Bill for some considerable time after an intention to proceed with it had been announced, and that that apparently accounted for the lack of what one would call the normal inter-party consultation.
It may well be that my right hon. and hon. Friends did not react immediately to what was, I believe, a Written Answer given by the Home Secretary on 28th April——

Mr. Roy Jenkins: Oral.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: So be it. Hon. Members will recall that the House was engaged in very serious and difficult matters at that date. Nevertheless, it is quite wrong to suggest, as did the hon. and learned Gentleman, that none of us reacted before the Summer Recess. Quite apart from the Parliamentary Question to the Home Secretary of 4th August to which my right hon. and learned Friend referred, I have in my hand a copy of Early Day Motion 166, which appeared on the Order Paper on 26th July, in the


name of a number of my hon. Friends from London and myself. It is headed "Election in London Boroughs", and it deplores—I will not read it all unless the Home Secretary wishes
deplores the intention of Her Majesty's Government to introduce legislation which will cause the postponement by a year of the 1967 London Borough elections …
Therefore, both by Parliamentary Question and by Motion on the Order Paper our position was made clear well before the Summer Recess.
Why, then, was there not consultation? The Home Secretary knows as well as anyone that it is the healthy habit in this country that when we propose alterations, great or small, in our electoral system we have inter-party consultation. I give the right hon. Gentleman the present o' the fact that, as far as I know, neither I nor any of my right hon. or hon. Friends asked for such consultations—I say that at once—but I say also that the polemical and, as he will recall, factually inaccurate terms of his Answer to me on 4th August did not lead anyone to draw the conclusion that he was disposed to discuss this as an inter-party matter. If he re-reads his own Answer he will be driven to the same conclusion. 
But, in any event, if there are to be consultations of this kind, the onus for initiating them lies with the Government which propose to alter the electoral system rather than with members of the Opposition who realise how unhappy its effect will be. I therefore ask the right hon. Gentleman to tell us why, before introducing this Bill only a few weeks ago, and knowing, as he did, that we were critical of it, and knowing, as I am sure he does, the ordinary constitutional custom in this country, he did not enter into consultations with my hon. and right hon. Friends to see whether it was possible to come to inter-party agreement on important changes in London's electoral arrangements. It is the absence of the consultation, which is normal in these matters, which naturally arouses the suspicion not only of my hon. Friends but of people outside as to the real purposes that lie behind this Measure.
The right hon. Lady the Minister of State did not add very much to human wisdom on this point—or, indeed, if she

will allow me to say so, on matters generally. What she failed to do, and what the right hon. Gentleman has failed to do throughout our proceedings, was to show the slightest willingness to compromise over the method of achieving what I think opinion generally wants to see achieved—the separation from 1970 onwards of elections on the same day.
It is beyond dispute that there are perfectly reputable methods with good precedents behind them—one was the precedent set by the late Lord Chuter Ede in 1949—for achieving this aim. What seems to me to be incredible is that the right hon. Gentleman should have made no attempt, having failed to have prior consultation, to show any willingness to compromise on what is, if one accepts his version of the reasons, a matter of means rather than of ends.
Why did he not show willingness to compromise? It is incredible that he should persist in making this change by the only method which, as he knows, involves the postponing of the 1967 elections, and by, as he also knows, the only method which involves serious Parliamentary controversy. It is quite extraordinary that the Home Secretary, faced as he admitted to the House yesterday with one of the biggest crime waves in history, and faced, as he showed today, by a situation in which all our prisons appear to be open prisons, should take on board, wholly unnecessarily, and at the expenditure of a great deal of Parliamentary time——

Mr. Lubbock: Whose fault is that?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: —the one method of achieving his object of the separation of elections which he knows to be controversial, and which involves the postponement of elections. The hon. Member for Orpington asks, "Whose fault is that?" I say at once to the Home Secretary that some of my hon. Friends and I made it quite clear at an earlier stage that we were prepared to accept either of the methods of doing this, which we put forward in an Amendment at the Committee stage. Subsequent proceedings would have proceeded quickly. It is just this point, that it is the Home Secretary's fault, and therefore one cannot help asking the Question, why does he proceed in this way?
The right hon. Gentleman—and, it is fair to say, his supporters—seemed to take an extraordinarily lighthearted approach to altering the election arrangements and the dates of elections. I would ask him this: does he accept the principle—and I hope he will answer this—that one should only alter electoral arrangements in this country either as a result of physical necessity, such as a reorganisation or redistribution, or on the basis of inter-party agreement? Does he accept that? If he does not accept that, will he tell us whether it is his view that it is right for a Government to use its majority to rig an electoral system in its own favour? Will it stop here? Will it stop, for example, at postponing the implementation of the work of the Parliamentary Boundary Commission, because its results look like being highly unfavourable to the Labour Party? It is a logical process that if one is prepared to postpone borough council elections when there is no necessity and no measure of agreement, why should one stop at postponing Parliamentary elections in the same circumstances?
One of my hon. Friends, the hon. and gallant Member for Carshalton (Captain W. Elliot), said that this set a very bad precedent. I agree with that, and I hope that the Home Secretary, who is responsible for the electoral machinery of this country, will also be unhappy that he should be setting a precedent which other Governments in other times might find it extremely convenient to be able to quote and to follow.
What is the position of the councillors who, I suppose, are the beneficiaries of this? It is the essence of the position of a local councillor that he is the locally elected representative of the people for whom he works. What is to be his position if he is there not by electoral choice but as a result of Parliamentary legislation? That affects the whole of his moral position, particularly when he knows, and knows well, that if the elections did take place in May 1967 he would not be there thereafter. Many of them must know that perfectly well, and, indeed, the right hon. Lady, in her speech this afternoon, said, "We believe that there is very good reason to defer the 1967 elections." We know what those

reasons are—the mounting tide of by-election failures which would-be Labour councillors have had during these last few months. Take the position of honourable men in all parties, hard-working people who serve their local community, knowing they are there not because their fellow citizens elected them, but knowing they are there because the right hon. Gentleman put the Whips on and carried, with his majority of 100, a Parliamentary Bill to perpetuate their term of office which had expired.
The silliest argument we have had in the course of these debates—and that is not an inconsiderable tribute—is that we would do even better as a party in 1968 and, therefore, it is not to our advantage to have the elections in 1967. That has been seriously propounded. I am not concerned on the point of whether it is right or wrong. I think it is right that we should do even better in 1968. because the whole tide is in our favour, but that is no justification for obtaining local power by a cheat during the very important and decisive year 1967–68, a year in which, as has been said again and again—and I repeat it for completeness—crucial decisions as to how our children will be educated will be taken in the outer boroughs due to be contested this year.
I say again, this not a question of whether one believes in full comprehensive or partial comprehensive schemes or in grammar schools. It is this, that we have a system of locally administered education in this country. In the outer London boroughs the parents and the electors should have the chance this spring of saying how they want their education to be organised. For this purpose, I do not care a rap whether the argument is for the comprehensive system or against it. I am concerned that this is an important matter. No hon. Member disputes that. It is so important that when it has to be decided by local representatives, they should be in truth and in fact local representatives properly elected.
There is a further horrifying argument, which was that this matter has already been decided. That has an unhappy echo of the dictators who always claimed to have arrived by electoral title and then saw to it that the election which gave them their title was the last. I beg the


Home Secretary to understand that it is a serious matter to extend the term of office of elected persons be yond the period for which it was understood they were going to be elected at the time they stood for election, and that this is a thing which he should avoid if he could. It is absolutely beyond dispute that he could perfectly well have avoided it.
No one now believes the story that all this arose as a result of a meeting of town clerks, concerned as we now know not with the 1967 elections, when there will be a month's gap under the present law between the G.L.C. and borough elections, but with the simple question whether or not it was a good thing to have the G.L.C. and borough council elections on the same day. We know that it arose as a result of a manoeuvre put forward in the political interest of the London Labour Party, which has good reason to fear facing the electors now, and even better reason to fear facing the electors after a winter of rising unemployment and a spring of rising rates.
This is a dishonest Bill which reflects no credit on its promoters. Its Short Title is misleading. It should read "A Bill to retain control of certain London boroughs by the Labour Party; to impose Labour councillors on the electorate of such boroughs; to deprive certain electors of the right to decide what provision shall be made for the education of their children; and for connected purposes."
If this Bill passes both Houses of Parliament, it will be known—and I shall be sorry, for I am an admirer of the right hon. Gentleman—as "Jenkins fiddle".

6.37 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Roy Jenkins): The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) always presses his points, both his big and his little points, with almost equal cogency and courtesy. What he had to say this evening was no exception to that rule. I will endeavour to reply to some of them. I have listened to the great majority of the debates on this Bill, in spite of one or two absences on one day in Committee, and I still say that it is wrong to describe this as a storm in a teacup. It is a storm in a thimble.

It is a very contrived case which has been made against the Bill.
Perhaps I may use a hunting metaphor. I am not sure whether I am less familiar with them than the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg), who yesterday in the House used one of the most striking and brilliant hunting metaphors I have ever heard developed. Mine is a much more modest one. Time and again, hares have been started from the other side, but, as soon as we have got very close to catching them, they have immediately been declared to be irrelevant. We had a good deal of dispute about whether Mr. Pritchard had or had not correctly quoted the minutes. My right hon. Friend the Minister of State this afternoon refuted this very powerfully, whereupon the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. fain Macleod) said it was not relevant and that he did not wish to press it.
We had the further case of the town clerks. There was a great issue as to whether the town clerks' memorandum was a secret document or whether we would put it in the Library. There was a great issue about whether I had set up a corrupt committee of town clerks. It was explained that I had set up nothing, that this committee had set itself up voluntarily. It was made clear that the document was completely open and we were happy to put it in the Library, whereupon we were told that the town clerks' position was completely irrelevant to what we were discussing.

Mr. Hogg: I told the right hon. Gentleman that on Second Reading.

Mr. Jenkins: The right hon. and learned Gentleman wound up on Second Reading, but he was not here to tell it to his right hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, West, who made a most impassioned speech about the iniquities of the town clerks. If it was irrelevant at 9.30, it was certainly not regarded as irrelevant at 4.30 that afternoon, or, if it was, the right hon. Member for Enfield, West made a speech of remarkable irrelevance, and I would never accuse him of that.
The fact is that the town clerks' memorandum was relevant to the central purpose of the Bill, which is to separate for the long term the dates of London


borough elections and G.L.C. elections. If it is contested that that is the central purpose of the Bill one would have to say—which I would hesitate to say in your presence, Mr. Deputy Speaker—that almost the whole of our proceedings in Committee were out of order because so much of our time was devoted to debating an Amendment which was a direct negative to the Second Reading. But I cannot believe that that is so. In fact, the central purpose is to deal with the long-term position.

Mr. Geoffrey Rippon: What about the short term, then?

Mr. Jenkins: I am coming to that. I am saying what the central purpose of the Bill is, and the town clerks' memorandum is directly relevant to that.
Having decided—there is a good deal of agreement on this—that one should alter the long-term position, although, of course, this is to go hack on the position we inherited from the previous Government, one then has to decide what is the sensible time at which to do it. If it is right to make this separation, I think that it should be done fairly soon. In my view, the worst of both worlds, which should be avoided if possible, would be to have two successive local government elections in successive months. I do not think that it makes good sense. It is no good the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone (Mr. Hogg) shaking his head. As I understand it, no one takes the view that this is a desirable position from the long-term point of view.
If it is desirable to have two successive elections in two successive months, and if it is good for local enthusiasm, as I think the hon. Member for Croydon, North-East (Mr. Weatherill) suggested, and good for the party organisations, why not go on doing it indefinitely? But this is not proposed by anyone. Not one borough out of the 32 wants to do that. [Interruption.] I wish that the right hon. and learned Member for Norwich, South, who has only just appeared in the debate—

Mr. Rippon: Hexham.

Mr. Jenkins: —for Hexham—I was omitting his defeat. I apologise, and I am

glad to know that he has found a seat, even if it be more in a more remote constituency.

Mr. Rippon: There are elections there in the same year.

Mr. Jenkins: Elections there are in successive months, but this is, none the less, not a desirable situation, and I do not understand that it is argued by any right hon. Gentleman opposite, and it is certainly not argued by any London borough, that such an arrangement is desirable in the long term. If that were the point a different proposition would have been before us.
If it is the view that there should be a separation, which I believe is the view generally acceptable to the House, the question is when should it be done. I should have thought that the broad proposition that, if changes were desirable it would be desirable to make them sooner rather than later, must also be acceptable, other things being equal. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, other things being equal. We shall come in a moment to what other things are not thought to be equal by hon. Members opposite, but, other things being equal, it must be desirable to make the change sooner rather than later.
Second, when the position is that the councils which would come up for election in the normal way in the spring of 1967 have, in fact, had only two years of effective power, I should have thought it more desirable to make the change at this stage, at the beginning, rather than make it at a later stage, either by giving subsequently elected councils four years of effective power or by then reducing their period to two years so that one increased the frequency of elections in the future. Leaving party considerations aside, I do not think that anyone who has regard to our local government polling figures and the number of electors who bother to go to the polls could take the view that we ought to increase the frequency of elections and that we would thereby be more likely to secure more democratic representation.
It has been alleged, again by the hon. Member for Croydon, North-East, I think, that I made this decision as the by-elections in Croydon or somewhere else went against us in the autumn. It


is perfectly clear that the Government were near to making this decision when I gave my answer to the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock) at the end of April, and the Government made the decision, in fact, whether it be thought a right or wrong decision, at the very peak of their popularity immediately after the election when we were streets ahead at every conceivable poll. Therefore, what happened at the by-elections is totally irrelevant to any consideration here.
Another of the irrelevant hares which have been put up or which have been declared irrelevant and not pursued as soon as we got after them is the extraordinary suggestion that the parentage of the Bill rested with various sinister figures on the Government Front Bench other than my right hon. Friend the Minister of State and myself. First, it was suggested that my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey (Mr. Mellish), the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, was the parent of the Bill. It was then pointed out that he had not understood exactly what the Bill would do. I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members opposite, who have a high respect, as I have, for my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey, would not suggest that he was the parent of a Bill which he did not fully understand.
More significantly—this has figured a good deal in our debates—it was suggested that the Bill was the result of a sinister plot between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science and myself in order to enable him to steamroller through plans for the reorganisation of secondary education in London. I am happy to say that my right hon. Friend and I discuss many things together, but we have never discussed this Bill, at least not until this morning, when I did ask him something which was relevant to it. Therefore, this argument which was not plausible when first advanced, today looks even more threadbare.
Hon. Members opposite may look rather sceptical about it. Perhaps I can reassure them by saying that, when they read my right hon. Friend's comments on the various schemes which have been put to him, some of which comments will be received by the boroughs in the morn-

ing, they will find, as I expect they know already, that their fears are quite unfounded and that speeches such as those made by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) at one stage in Committee bear no relation in fact to what is remotely likely to happen.
We can dismiss a great number of the matters which have been raised. The right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames has been moving rather rapidly backwards and forwards between the third bench and the Front Bench opposite during our debates. When speaking with, perhaps, even greater freedom and fluency from the third bench than he commands on the Front Bench, the right hon. Gentleman indulged on one occasion in a remarkable flight of hyperbole, saying that nothing like this Bill had been seen since the Septennial Act. I only hope that the Septennial Act was opposed rather more vigorously and by a rather larger number of Opposition Members than has been the case with this Bill. This afternoon, while the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone was speaking, I counted the attendance opposite, and there were 14 Members present. [HON. MEMBERS: "How many on the Government side?"] The point which this side of the House makes, which I have put fully to the House on earlier occasions and which I shall continue to put, is that the Bill is a small and reasonable matter of administrative convenience. The Opposition's point is that the Bill is a constitutional monstrosity. There is, therefore, no comparison whatever between the attendance on this side and the attendance on the other side of the House.
Fourteen hon. Members opposite were listening to the inspired oratory of the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone, and no fewer than 13 came from the Greater London area. I do not for a moment take the point that those from outside the Greater London area should not speak. I was sorry that the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Sir D. Glover) was not called. But I would have thought that if the Bill were a constitutional monstrosity, and if the opposition to it were not just a bit of little local log-rolling, there would have been a great many more speeches from hon. Members not directly concerned, but with a much


wider national interest. However we have seen nothing of that sort.

Captain W. Elliot: Surely the right hon. Gentleman would agree that we got only the comparatively limited time we did by pressure from this side of the House? Had the right hon. Gentleman given us more time we would have had more speeches.

Mr. Jenkins: We could not have had more speeches by hon. Members who were not in the Chamber to make them.
Another point was developed by the hon. Member for Carshalton (Captain W. Elliot) and the hon. Member for Peterborough (Sir Harmar Nicholls), representing the broad acres of England and not the Greater London boroughs. That was the view that constitutional change should in all normal cases take place by agreement between the parties. If that can be secured, it is desirable, but to take the view that it is a well-established practice of English history and English constitutional development that constitutional change normally takes place by agreement between the parties, and that it is most unusual for anything else to happen, is a remarkable version of English history over the past 150 years. If that were the only way in which it were to happen we would have a constitution very different from that which we have at present.
The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone several times used the phrase, "the brute force of a majority", with which he said that we were pushing the Bill through. We had the biggest majority on Second Reading that any Government Bill has secured in this Parliament. If it were a squalid little Bill, I am not sure that that would happen. The majority did not come from one party only but from the Liberal Party as well as the Labour Party.
As far as I am aware, the Liberal Party has no great vested interest to defend in these matters, and I think that the hon. Member for Orpington has argued most cogently and consistently throughout the debates. There have been a great number of disparaging remarks about the Liberal Party, particularly by the hon. Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt) in his speech. He asked why the Liberal Party renounced its traditions as a great party, and one must ask, "When, in the view

of hon. Members opposite, does the Liberal Party renounce its traditions as a great party?" I think that the answer is, "When it disagrees with the Conservative Party". That is precisely the position held to have arisen throughout the Bill.
The Bill has had the largest majority on Second Reading of any Government Bill, and there has been a good deal of cross-party feeling outside. The right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames this afternoon referred to the fact that Labour councillors in Kingston-upon-Thames are protesting about the Bill. That is quite reasonable if they do not like it. But it shows that it is not a party manoeuvre. Equally, as the right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone knows very well, the Conservative Party in West-minister is, and has been throughout, solidly behind the Bill. Does he think that it is necessarily undermining democracy, and that all those supporters of his who are also supporters of the Bill are necessarily betrayers of local democracy?
There is a solid majority in the House, a great deal of cross-party support outside, and, I believe, a general feeling in support of the Bill, which I think is a sensible arrangement which, if the party opposite—

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Will the right hon. Gentleman, before he sits down, deal with my question of why there was no inter-party consultation?

Mr. Jenkins: I will deal with that point. The history of the matter has been gone into to some extent. I indicated the movement of the Government's mind fairly clearly to the hon. Member for Orpington at the end of April. In the first week of August I answered a Question giving the clear position. When—as the House knows because it has often been reminded of it—I inadvertently misquoted a figure for which I apologise once again, that matter was raised with me by the right hon. Gentleman.
I dislike quoting conversations outside but I have been pressed to do so by the right hon. Gentleman. The right hon. and learned Member for St. Marylebone and I had conversations about this matter, and I explained to him that I had made a mistake. He said that he did not accuse me of bad faith, but warned me clearly


that the Opposition would return to this matter. But he showed not the slightest desire for consultation or the desire to find any sort of compromise solution.

Mr. Hogg: The right hon. Gentleman cannot get away with that. He had already announced his decision at that point. The time at which I should have wished to be consulted was before he made up his mind.

Mr. Jenkins: I indicated the way our mind was moving—that was part of the interchange we had earlier. There were three and a half months during which I gave clear indication of the way our mind was moving. No approach was received. But the point which the right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames took was not only the question of why there was no consultation before the Government announced their decision but why, after we announced our decision

and when he made his opposition clear, we did not then have consultation to see if we could find a compromise. That was the point the right hon. Gentleman put to me precisely, but there was no indication of it then.

I think that the Bill, which has aroused much more controversy than I would have hoped—our debates have been long and on the whole good-tempered—proposes a sensible arrangement. If the party opposite did not see—probably mistakenly, but none of us can tell—the prospect of a big electoral advantage next May they would support it, as I believe do many of their followers outside and the public generally.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—

The House divided: Ayes 328, Noes 227.

Division No. 226.]
AYES
[6.58 p.m.


Abse, Leo
Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Fowler, Gerry


Albu, Austen
Crawshaw, Richard
Fraser, John (Norwood)


Allaun, Frank (Salford, E.)
Crosland, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Fraser, Rt. Hn, Tom (Hamilton)


Alldritt, Walter
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Freeson, Reginald


Allen, Scholefield
Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Galpern, Sir Myer


Anderson, Donald
Dalyell, Tam
Gardner, Tony


Archer, Peter
Darling, Rt. Hn. George
Garrett, W. E.


Armstrong, Ernest
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)
Ginsburg, David


Ashley, Jack
Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire, W.)
Gourlay, Harry


Atkins, Ronald (Preston, N.)
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stretford)
Gray, Dr. Hugh (Yarmouth)


Bacon, Rt. Hn. Alice
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Greenwood, Rt. Hn. Anthony


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Davies, Ednyfed Hudson (Conway)
Gregory, Arnold


Barnes, Michael
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Griffiths, David (Rother Valley)


Barnett, Joel
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Griffiths, Rt. Hn. James (Llanelly)


Baxter, William
Davies, Robert (Cambridge)
Griffiths, Will (Exchange)


Beaney, Alan
Davies, S.O. (Merthyr)
Gunter, Rt. Hn. R. J.


Bellenger, Rt. Hn. F. J.
Delargy, Hugh
Hale, Leslie (Oldham, W.)


Bence, Cyril
Dell, Edmund
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)


Benn, Rt. Hn. Anthony Wedgwood
Dempsey, James
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)


Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)
Dewar, Donald
Hamling, William


Bessell, Peter
Diamond, Rt. Hn. John
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)


Bidwell, Sydney
Dickens, James
Hart, Mrs. Judith


Binns, John
Doig, Peter
Haseldine, Norman


Bishop, E. S.
Donnelly, Desmond
Hattersley, Roy


Blackburn, F.
Driberg, Tom
Hazell, Bert


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Dunn, James A.
Henig, Stanley


Boardman, H.
Dunnett, Jack
Herbison, Rt. Hn. Margaret


Boston, Terence
Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)
Hilton, W. S.


Bowden, Rt. Hn. Herbert
Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b'e)
Hobden, Dennis (Brighton, K'town)


Boyden, James
Eadie, Alex
Hooley, Frank


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
Edwards, Rt. Hn. Ness (Caerphilly)
Hooson, Emlyn


Bradley, Tom
Edwards, William (Merioneth)
Horner, John


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Ellis, John
Houghton, Rt. Hn. Douglas


Brooks, Edwin
English, Michael
Howarth, Harry (Wellingborough)


Broughton, Dr. A. D. D.
Ennals, David
Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)


Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Ensor, David
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Howie, W.


Buchan, Norman
Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)
Hoy, James


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Faulds, Andrew
Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Fernyhough, E.
Hughes, Emrys (Ayrshire, S.)


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Finch, Harold
Hughes, Hector (Aberdeen, N.)


Carmichael, Neil
Fitch, Alan (Wigan)
Hughes, Roy (Newport)


Carter-Jones, Lewis
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Hunter, Adam


Castle, Rt. Hn. Barbara
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Hynd, John


Chapman, Donald
Floud, Bernard
Irvine, A. J. (Edge Hill)


Coe, Dennis
Foley, Maurice
Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)


Coleman, Donald
Foot, Sir Dingle (Ipswich)
Janner, Sir Barnett


Concannon, J. D.
Foot, Michael (Ebbw Vale)
Jay, Rt. Hn. Douglas


Conlan, Bernard
Ford, Ben
Jeger, Mrs. Lena (H'b'n&amp;St. P'cras, S.)


Corbet, Mrs. Freda
Forrester, John
Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)




Jenkins, Rt. Hn. Roy (Stechford)
Morgan, Elystan (Cardiganshire)
Shinwell, Rt. Hn. E.


Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Shore, Peter (Stepney)


Johnson, James (K'ston-on-Hull, W.
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Short, Rt. Hn. Edward (N'c'stle-u-Tyne)


Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Morris, John (Aberavon)
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N.E.)


Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Moyle, Roland
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)


Jones, Rt. Hn. Sir Elwyn (W. Ham, S.)
Murray, Albert
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Newens, Stan
Silverman, Julius (Aston)


Judd, Frank
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Silverman, Sydney (Nelson)


Kelley, Richard
Norwood, Christopher
Skeffington, Arthur


Kenyon, Clifford
Oakes, Gordon
Slater, Joseph


Kerr, Mrs. Anne (R'ter &amp; Chatham)
Ogden, Eric
Small, William


Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)
O'Malley, Brian
Snow, Julian


Kerr, Russell (Feltham)
Oram, Albert E.
Spriggs, Leslie


Leadbitter, Ted
Orbach, Maurice
Steel, David (Roxburgh)


Lee, Rt. Hn. Frederick (Newton)
Orme, Stanley
Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)


Lee, Rt. Hn. Jennie (Cannock)
Oswald, Thomas
Stewart, Rt. Hn. Michael


Lee, John (Reading)
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)
Stonehouse, John


Lestor, Miss Joan
Owen, Will (Morpeth)
Strauss, Rt. Hn. G. R.


Lewis, Arthur (W. Ham, N.)
Padley, Walter
Swain, Thomas


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)
Swingler, Stephen


Lipton, Marcus
Paget, R. T.
Taverne, Dick


Lomas, Kenneth
Palmer, Arthur
Thomas, George (Cardiff, W.)


Loughlin, Charles
Pardoe, John
Thornton, Ernest


Luard, Evan
Park, Trevor
Tinn, James


Lubbock, Eric
Parker, John (Dagenham)
Tomney, Frank


Lyon, Alexander W. (York)
Parkin, Ben (Paddington, N.)
Tuck, Raphael


Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)
Urwin, T. W.


Mabon Dr. J. Dickson
Pavitt, Laurence
Varley, Eric G.


McBride, Neil
Pearson, Arthur (Pontypridd)
Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)


McCann, John
Peart, Rt. Hn. Fred
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


MacColl, James
Pentland, Norman
Wallace, George


Macdonald, A. H.
Perry, Ernest G. (Battersea, S.)
Watkins, David (Consett)


McCuire, Michael
Perry, George H. (Nottingham, S.)
Watkins, Tudor (Brecon &amp; Radnor)


McKay, Mrs. Margaret
Prentice, Rt. Hn. R. E.
Weitzman, David


Mackenzie, Alasdair (Ross &amp; Crom'ty)
Price Christopher (Perry Bar)
Wellbeloved, James


Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Price, Thomas (Westhoughton)
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


Mackie, John
Price, William (Rugby)
Whitaker, Ben


Mackintosh, John P.
Probert, Arthur
White, Mrs. Eirene


Maclennan, Robert
Pursey, Cmdr. Harry
Whitlock, William


MacMillan, Malcolm (Western Isles)
Randall, Harry
Wigg, Rt. Hn. George


McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Rankin, John
Wilkins, W. A.


MacPherson, Malcolm
Redhead, Edward
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
Rees, Merlyn
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Mallalieu, E. L. (Brigg)
Rhodes, Geoffrey
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


Mal1alieu, J.P.W.(Huddersfield, E.)
Richard, Ivor
Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)


Manuel, Archie
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Mapp, Charles
Roberts, Goronwy (Caernarvon)
Williams, W. T. (Warrington)


Marquand, David
Roberts, Gwilym (Bedfordshire, S.)
Willis, George (Edinburgh, E.)


Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard
Robertson, John (Paisley)
Wilson, William (Coventry, S.)


Mason, Roy
Robinson, Rt. Hn. Kenneth (St. P'c'as)
Winnick, David


Maxwell, Robert
Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth'stow, E.)
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Mayhew, Christopher
Roebuck, Roy
Winterbottom, R. E.


Mellish, Robert
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Mendelson, J. J.
Rose, Paul
Woof, Robert


Mikardo, Ian
Ross, Rt. Hn. William
Wyatt, Woodrow


Millan, Bruce
Rowland, Christopher (Meriden)
Yates, Victor


Miller, Dr. M. S.
Rowlands, E. (Cardiff, N.)
Zilliacus, K.


Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Ryan, John



Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Shaw, Arnold (Ilford, S.)
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Molloy William
Sheldon, Robert
Mr. Lawson and Mr. Grey.


Moonman, Eric






NOES


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Boyle, Rt. Hn. Sir Edward
Corfield, F. V.


Allason, James (Hemel Hempstead)
Braine, Bernard
Costain, A. P.


Astor, John
Brewis, John
Craddock Sir Beresford (Spelthorne)


Atkins, Humphrey (M't'n &amp; M'd'n)
Brinton, Sir Tatton
Crawley, Aidan


Awdry Daniel
Bromley-Davenport, Lt. Col. Sir Walter
Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver


Baker, W. H. K.
Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Crouch, David


Barber, Rt. Hn. Anthony
Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Crowder, F. P.


Batsford, Brian
Bryan, Paul
Cunningham, Sir Knox


Beamish, Col. Sir Tufton
Bullus, Sir Eric
Currie, G. B. H.


Bell, Ronald
Burden, F. A.
Dalkeith, Earl of


Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torquay)
Campbell, Gordon
Dance, James


Bennett, Dr. Reginald (Gos. &amp; Fhm)
Carlisle, Mark
d' Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry


Berry, Hn. Anthony
Carr, Rt. Hn. Robert
Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)


Biffen, John
Cary, Sir Robert
Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)


Biggs-Davison, John
Channon, H. P. G.
Digby, Simon Wingfield


Birch, Rt. Hn. Nigel
Chichester-Clark, R.
Doughty, Charles


Black, Sir Cyril
Clark, Henry
Drayson, G. B.


Blaker, Peter
Clegg, Walter
du Cann, Rt. Hn. Edward


Body, Richard
Cooke, Robert
Eden, Sir John


Bossom, Sir Clive
Cooper-Key, Sir Neill
Elliot, Capt. Walter (Carshalton)


Boyd-Carpenter, Rt. Hn. John
Cordle, John
Errington, Sir Eric







Eyre, Reginald
Kerby, Capt. Henry
Prior, J. M. L.


Farr, John
Kershaw, Anthony
Pym, Francis


Fisher, Nigel
Kimball, Marcus
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
King, Evelyn (Dorset, S.)
Ramsden, Rt. Hn. James


Forrest, George
Kitson, Timothy
Rawlinson, Rt. Hn. Sir Peter


Fortescue, Tim
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Rees-Davies, W. R.


Foster, Sir John
Lambton, Viscount
Renton, Rt. Hn. Sir David


Fraser, Rt. Hn. Hugh (St'fford &amp; Stone)
Lancaster, Col. C. G.
Ridley, Hn. Nicholas


Galbraith, Hn. T. G.
Langford-Holt, Sir John
Ridsdale, Julian


Gibson-Watt, David
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)


Glover, Sir Douglas
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey (Sut'nC'dfield)
Roots, William


Glyn, Sir Richard
Lloyd, Ian (P'tsm'th, Langstone)
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Godber, Rt. Hn. J. B.
Lloyd, Rt. Hn. Selwyn (Wirral)
Royle, Anthony


Goodhart, Philip
Longden, Gilbert
Russell, Sir Ronald


Goodhew, Victor
Loveys, W. H.
St. John-Stevas, Norman


Gower, Raymond
McAdden, Sir Stephen
Scott, Nicholas


Grant, Anthony
MacArthur, Ian
Sharples, Richard


Grant-Ferris, R.
Maclean, Sir Fitzroy
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Gresham Cooke, R.
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain
Sinclair, Sir George


Grieve, Percy
McMaster, Stanley
Smith, John


Griffiths, Eldon (Bury St. Edmunds)
Macmillan, Maurice (Farnham)
Stainton, Keith


Gurden, Harold
Maddan, Martin
Stodart, Anthony


Hall, John (Wycombe)
Maginnis, John E.
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. (Ripon)


Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Marten, Neil
Summers, Sir Spencer


Hamilton, Marquess of (Fermanagh)
Maude, Angus
Talbot, John E.


Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Mawby, Ray
Tapsell, Peter


Harris, Frederic (Croydon, N.W.)
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Taylor, Sir Charles (Eastbourne)


Harris, Reader (Heston)
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow, Cathcart)


Harrison, Brian (Maldon)
Mills, Stratton (Belfast, N.)
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Miscampbell Norman
Teeling, Sir William


Harvey, Sir Arthur Vere
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Temple, John M.


Harvie Anderson, Miss
Monro, Hector
Tilney, John


Hastings, Stephen
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Hawkins, Paul
Morrison, Charles (Devizes)
van Straubenzee, W. R.


Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel
Mott-Radclyffe, Sir Charles
Vaughan-Morgan, Rt. Hn. Sir John


Heath, Rt. Hn. Edward
Munro-Lucas-Tooth, Sir Hugh
Vickers, Dame Joan


Heseltine, Michael
Murton, Oscar
Walker, Peter (Worcester)


Higgins, Terence L.
Nabarro, Sir Gerald
Walker-Smith, Rt. Hn. Sir Derek


Hiley, Joseph
Neave, Airey
Wall, Patrick


Hill, J. E. B.
Nicholls, Sir Harmar
Watters, Dennis


Hirst, Geoffrey
Noble, Rt. Hn. Michael
Weatherill, Bernard


Hudson, Rt. Hn. Sir John
Nott, John
Wells, John (Maldstone)


Holland, Philip
Onslow, Cranley
Whitelaw, William


Hordern, Peter
Orr, Capt. L. P. S.
Wills, Sir Gerald (Bridgwater)


Hornby, Richard
Orr-Ewing, Sir Ian
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Howell, David (Guildford)
Osborn, John (Hallam)
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Hunt, John
Page, Graham (Crosby)
Wood, Rt. Hn. Richard


Hutchison, Michael Clark
Page John (Harrow, W.)
Woodnutt, Mark


Iremonger, T. L.
Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)
Worsley, Marcus


Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Percival Ian
Wylie, N. R.


Jennings, J. C. (Burton)
Peyton, John
Younger, Hn. George


Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Pike, Miss Mervyn



Jones, Arthur (Northants, S.)
Pink, R. Bonner
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Jopling, Michael
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch



Joseph, Rt. Hn. Sir Keith
Price, David (Eastleigh)
Mr. R. W. Elliott and Mr. More.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Orders of the Day — POLICE PENSIONS REGULATIONS

7.10 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Dick Taverne): I beg to move,
That the Police Pensions Regulations, 1966, a draft of which was laid before this House on 15th November, be approved.
These new consolidated Regulations bring together in one instrument the provisions of the Police Pensions Regulations, 1962, and the eight subsequent sets of amending Regulations. I therefore hope that they will be welcomed by the House on that account. When I last introduced amending Regulations to the House, I said that construing eight sets of amending Regulations together with the principal ones of 1962 presented a formidable problem. For the time being, at any rate, there will be only one document and the treasure hunt will now be over.
Like the former Regulations, these apply in England, Wales and Scotland, and in revoking the earlier Regulations and re-stating them this consolidation provides a comprehensive code in relation to the past as well as to the future. I emphasise that the Regulations in no way affect the entitlement of existing pensioners, whose rights are fully safeguarded.
Two changes are introduced by these Regulations to which I should draw attention, for they are largely administrative. The first relates to the financial arrangements for a police authority to discharge its liability in respect of accrued pension entitlement of an officer who is transferred to another force. The present arrangements are that the authority pays an apportioned contribution towards the eventual pension payable by the police authority of the force in which the officer later serves.
These Regulations provide instead that the liability should be discharged at the time of transfer by an immediate lump sum known as a transfer value. This is a common method of discharging pension liabilities in the case of transfer between public employment and is familiar to the local authorities who will be operating it. The main provisions

which give effect to this change are contained in Regulations 62 and 64 and Schedule 7. So the contribution system, if I may call it such, is replaced by the transfer value system.
The other change concerns the aggregation of service for pension purposes in the case of officers who have served in the police or the Civil Service or in civil employment which is, in effect, pensionable on Civil Service terms by means of the Metropolitan Police Staff (Superannuation) Acts. The computation of wages for such aggregated service is contained in Section 10 of the Police Pensions Act, 1921, preserved by the Police Pensions Act, 1948, pending the introduction of the new transfer arrangements on the lines of those applying generally in the public service.
Persons leaving or entering police service will be covered by the new transfer arrangements contained in Regulations 38 and 65 and Schedules 4 and 7 of these Regulations. But in relation to persons leaving or entering other employment involved in the transfer, it is necessary for these provisions to be complemented by further transfer rules to be made by the Treasury and the Home Secretary under the Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1948, which is the general authority concerned with transfer provisions for the public service. If these Regulations are approved, the relevant transfer rules will come into operation on the same day. They are subject to the negative Resolution procedure.
I am sorry if these are rather technical and complicated but the effect of the change is again that the transfer value system and not the contribution system now also applies to persons moving between the police and the Civil Service, or civilian employment covered by the Metropolitan Police Staff (Superannuation) Acts. The new arrangements will cover transfers which are completed on or after the date when the provisions come into operation. The provisions of Section 10 of the old Police Pensions Act, 1921, will still govern the entitlement of aggregate service in the case of officers who have completed their transfers before that date. There are a few other changes, either of a minor nature or to clarify Regulations where the present wording is not entirely clear.

Orders of the Day — ROYAL ASSENT

7.22 p.m.

Message to attend the Lords Commissioners:

The House went:—and, having returned;

Mr. SPEAKER reported the Royal Assent to:

1. Land Registration Act, 1966.
2. Expiring Laws Continuance Act, 1966.
3. Arbitration (International Investment Disputes) Act, 1966.
4. Local Government Act, 1966.
5. Tribunals and Inquiries Act, 1966.
6. New Towns Act, 1966.
7. Liverpool Corporation Act, 1966.
8. Brighton Corporation Act, 1966.
9. Hove Corporation Act, 1966.

Orders of the Day — POLICE PENSIONS REGULATIONS

Mr. Taverne: I am not entirely sure where I left off in the course of my exciting oration, but if I resume at the wrong place I dare say that no one will have noticed. I think that I had just finished explaining that there were some changes of a minor or clarifying nature in cases where the present wording was not clear. An example of the minor change is one relating to the calculation of pension payable to an officer injured on duty.
In calculating or reviewing such a pension the officer's degree of disablement is taken into account, but under the existing provisions only the degree of disablement arising from the injury which occasioned the grant of the pension may be so considered, even though the degree of disablement is increased as a delayed result of some other injury on duty. New Regulation 107 provides that in cases of future retirement the degree of disablement attributable to any injury on duty shall be taken into account.
An example of clarification is a change in the old Regulation 12A(4) of the 1962 Regulations. This used to provide that the gratuity payable to a widow whose husband's death resulted from an attack or injury received in effecting an arrest

should be calculated by reference to the pay of a constable in a police force. The last six words are relevant. At that time the police pay rates were uniform throughout the country. The Police (Amendment) Regulations 1966, granted supplementary pay of £50 a year to constables in the City of London and Metropolitan Police Forces. The new Regulation 14(4) makes it clear that the gratuity shall be calculated by reference to the pay of a constable in the police force of which the husband was a member.
Finally, the House should know that these Regulations, including the changes which I have mentioned, have been drawn up by the Departments in full consultation with the local authorities and police associations concerned and have been agreed by the Police Council of Great Britain.

7.30 p.m.

Sir David Renton: I thank the hon. and learned Gentleman for the clarity of his explanation and congratulate him upon its continuity. I remember a time, before we passed the Police Pensions (Consolidation) Act in 1961, when all current police pension Regulations were in such a state of chaos that there were only two people in the world who both understood them and could find the answer to a question about them. I do not know whether, even now, many could claim to do that, but we have this consolation at least, that anyone who wishes to find out is able, has been since the first consolidation in 1962 and is now able again, to look at the Regulations and find fully and clearly set out what is, necessarily, a complex system of laws. The draftsmen of these Regulations deserve great credit for this remarkable task.
Very often on these occasions the Government spokesman can announce several improvements made, having been negotiated and approved by the Police Council. The hon. and learned Gentleman announced only one of substance, and that is with regard to the aggregation of police service and two other forms of public service. I would regard that as a minor step in the right direction. I have always thought it unfortunate that when a person moved from one part of


the public service to another he did not automatically carry all his pension rights with him. To the extent that the Regulations enable that to be done, I welcome them.
Shorly before the debate started, I mentioned to the hon. and learned Gentleman one matter which puzzles me. Under Regulations 62 and 102, there are certain pension transfer rights of which a policeman has the benefit when transferring from one police force to another. The Regulation which contains definitions states that a police force includes an overseas force. To find out which overseas force it may include, we must turn to the definitions on page 59 and to the expression "overseas corps". We find that it means:
…any body in which persons such as are mentioned in… the Police (Overseas Service) Act 1945…are serving and in relation to which regulations made under section 1(2) of that Act have been made;
It is important that the House should know how this affects officers serving in the police force in Rhodesia. A year ago, at the time of U.D.I., the Government rightly said that, in spite of U.D.I. it was important that law and order should be maintained in Rhodesia. That meant that officers already serving in what was then called—I think it still is —the South Africa Police Force, although it has nothing to do with the Union, should remain at their posts and suffer no disadvantage from doing so.
I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman can assure the House that, if there is any such officer who remained at his post in Rhodesia in response to the plea to maintain law and order, but who later decides that he wishes to come home to this country, which may be his true home, he will not be penalised and will get the benefits of Regulations 62 and 102. I should be grateful for such an explanation.

7.34 p.m.

Mr. Taverne: I am grateful for the remarks of the right hon. and learned Gentleman for his tribute to the draftsmen, of whom I am in some awe. I agree that, despite their efforts, it is still not easy to find one's way around these Regulations. In particular, it is not necessarily very easy to deal with all the

cross references like the Police (Overseas Service) Act, 1945, referred to in the definition of "overseas corps".
The ease of transfer in public service has now been generally agreed in principle and will be facilitated by the changes which have been made. In the past, it was a very difficult matter to enact or to pass legislation about, because there was still transfer between forces in this country covered by the contribution system and it was impossible to combine that system with a transfer value system. This difficulty has now been removed. The integration which we would all like to see overall will be much more easy.
I am afraid that I cannot give the right hon. and learned Member a complete answer to his last question, because, to some extent, this depends on legislation for which the Treasury has responsibility. What I can tell him is that the position of any policeman in the Rhodesian Police at the moment has not been affected by the illegal declaration of independence. His position for transfer would be exactly the same as it was before the declaration. On the other hand, whether or not someone in the Rhodesian Police, even before the illegal declaration, could transfer with aggregated pension rights depends on, I think, the Public Office Rules.
These Rules may enable a transfer between the Rhodesian force and the Metropolitan force, with aggregation of pension rights. I am afraid that they do not, however, allow for a transfer between the Rhodesian force and other police forces in this country. In a way, this is the result of a historical accident. At the beginning of this century, a position in the Metropolitan Police was classified as the holding of a public office. For some reason, it was felt that a position in another force was not a public office.
By this strange chance, transfers are sometimes possible, with aggregation of pension rights, from an overseas force to the Metropolitan Police or from some public office to the Metropolitan Police, which are not possible in the case of other forces. I shall certainly look into this matter and let the right hon. and learned Member know the position in relation to Rhodesia under the Public Office Rules. I can assure him that this position has in no way been affected by the illegal declaration of independence.

Mr. R. J. Maxwell-Hyslop: Before the hon. and learned Gentleman sits down, perhaps he would tell us whether somebody who transfers into the Metropolitan Police can then transfer from that force to one or other of the police forces without losing his rights. This might be a way of overcoming the difficulty.

Mr. Taverne: I cannot answer that without studying more carefully the Public Office Rules. Transfers between forces present no problem, since, in effect, the transfer value eventually has to be paid by the last force in which a policeman served. I am not sure. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that this roundabout way would not solve the problem created by the Public Office Rules.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Police Pensions Regulations, 1966, a draft of which was laid before this House on 15th November, be approved.

Orders of the Day — COTTON INDUSTRY

7.40 p.m.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. George Darling): I beg to move,
That the Cotton Industry Development Council (Amendment No. 6) Order 1966, a draft of which was laid before this House on 10th November, be approved.
The purpose of the draft Order is to make amendments to the Cotton Industry Development Council Order originally introduced in 1948. The House will know that the Cotton Board was established by Order as a Development Council under the 1947 Industrial Organisation and Development Act. For a number of years, the Development Council, or Cotton Board, has carried out important and valuable activities on behalf of the cotton industry. Since 1964, it has included the users of man-made fibres. The House will also be aware that the principal Act provides for a review of the position of the Development Council after three years and then at five-year intervals.
The review which has led up to this latest Order began in July last year and is the fourth of its kind. The Act requires the Board of Trade to consult organisations representing both employers and employees in the industry on the question whether the council should con-

tinue in being and, if so, whether the Development Council Order should be amended in any respect. We have consulted the Board and the organisations representing employers and employees and have been told that they all wish the Cotton Board, or—to give it the title in the Order—the Development Council, to be continued for a further period.
There was, however, substantial opinion in the industry—because of the increasing use of man-made fibres, the development of new textile processes and the increasing part played in the industry by large firms with wide-ranging interests in textiles—which was in favour of extending the council to cover all textiles. But it was not unanimous. It did not commend itself to all the interests concerned.
On the one hand, the man-made fibre producers, the yarn processors and the warp knitters have agreed to join the council and the narrow fabrics industry may join later. On the other hand, the wool and hosiery industries have declined to participate in the council. Nevertheless, the door remains open, if any of them changes his mind.
The object of the amending Order, therefore, is to provide for the new members by adding to the definition of the industry certain activities in the manufacture of man-made fibres, filament yarn and warp-knitted fabrics and by renaming the Development Council the Textile Council, with, as a sort of sub-title in brackets (for the Man-Made Fibre, Cotton and Silk Industries of Great Britain). There are some other changes which include a revision of the basis on which the levy is to be calculated, an increase in the maximum amount which may be imposed on the industry from £525,000 to £625,000 for the year beginning 1st April next.
There is also an increase in the number of employer members from four to eight and of employees from four to six and also a revision of the functions of the Development Council to exclude some activities which, upon examination, were found to be unnecessary.
The House will, I think, wish me to explain briefly some of the proposed changes to the principal Order which, I repeat, has been agreed to by all the parties in the industry. First, an increase


in the maximum amount of levy which may be imposed on the industry is necessary because of the increase in the membership of the Textile Council. We have widened the council and, therefore, there are more activities on which the money may be spent. The figure of £625,000 is a ceiling designed to give the council some room for manoeuvre in the next five years.
Secondly, the increase in the number of council members reflects the increase in the council's responsibilities. It was recognised that if the number of trade union members was to be increased, in the line with the number of employers' members, the council would then have 90 members and it was thought that that would be rather too many; that it would make for a somewhat unwieldy body. The trade unions have, therefore, agreed to smaller representation than the employers, on the understanding that the employers will not have a majority on the council. The trade union and independent representatives together outnumber the employers' representatives by one, nine to eight.
In the setting up of the new Textile Council, the employers' and work-people's representative associated with it have shown a real appreciation of the changes in the structure and organisation of the textile industry, changes which have taken place since 1948. I feel sure that the new council can and will play a major part in assisting and guiding a wider industry in the years ahead.
If the Order meets with the approval of the House, the membership of the new Textile Council will be announced before 2nd January, 1967, when the Order is due to take effect. In saying this, I feel sure that the House would wish me to pay a well deserved tribute to the valuable work which the Chairman, Mr. Frank Rostron, and the members and staff of the Cotton Board have done for the industry over many years.
The proposed Amendments to the principal Order are contained in Schedule 1 of the draft Order, on pages 3 to 9. I agree that the changes in this form are not easy to follow, but Schedule 2, pages 9 to 21, sets out for the convenience of all concerned the fully amended version of the principal Order. The amending Order requires an affirmative Resolution

of both Houses and hon. Members will know that a Resolution has already been passed in another place.
I am sure that the House will welcome this widening of the scope of the original Development Council It is more than an extension of its activities; in a very real sense this is a new organisation. It is not merely a bigger Cotton Board. The Textile Council will cover, and do much to assist, the development of a large and growing industry, one of the major industries of the country.
I do not think that hon. Members would wish me now to comment in detail on Schedule 2. I appreciate that many hon. Members who take a keen interest in the textile industry will wish to speak in the debate, to make their own comments and, perhaps, seek explanations of these provisions. If they do, I shall do my best to answer their questions.

7.50 p.m.

Mr. A. G. F. Hall-Davis: I wish, first, to thank the Minister for his explanation. Having done that, may I say that while we hold him personally in high regard, and appreciate the way in which he always addresses himself to points raised in debate, we feel that the presence tonight of the right hon. Gentleman the President of the Board of Trade would have been appreciated by the House and, perhaps more important, would have been taken as an encouragement and reassurance by the industry. This is particularly so because the debate on this Order comes at a time when an opportunity for the House to consider the work of the Cotton Board and its relation to the present position of the textile industry is very welcome.
There are today comparatively few hon. Members who can themselves remember the time when coal and cotton, by their exports, underpinned the economy of the United Kingdom. Yet those of us who come from or represent the traditional textile areas of Lancashire can recollect only short periods when the cotton textile industry—and I use the term in its broad sense—has not been engaged in the difficult and often painful process of adjusting itself, first, to the disappearance of many of its overseas markets, and. secondly, to the arrival on the home market of an increasing flow of textiles from low wage countries enjoying tariff-free entry into the United Kingdom. The


textile industry operates today, as, on the whole, it has operated for many years, in as keenly competitive market conditions as any industry in Britain. It is against this background that we must consider the Order.
As the Minister explained, the Order affects almost every section of what is still, even after a long period of contraction, one of our most important industries. But I also believe—and this should be brought out clearly—that the Order reflects the new realities of the textile industry.
When we passed the Cotton Industry Act, 1959, it was the intention to open a new chapter for the textile industry. It was hoped that certain highly desirable consequences would flow from that Measure. I believe that, on the whole, those hopes have been fulfilled. Changes have subsequently occurred which have greatly strengthened the industry. Those changes can be listed under three main headings and they are reflected in the terms of the Order, not once but time and again.
First, there are the structural changes that have occurred in the organisation of the industry. A number of major new groupings have emerged, often with a greater vertical range of units within a single ownership than was previously usual, and with financial and technical links to supplement their own verticalisation. Perhaps the most important consequence of this has been to establish a greater and closer contact between the man-made fibre producers and the other sectors of the industry. The Minister referred particularly to this change in the composition of the Textile Council and it is, I believe, likely that the most important innovation in the Order is the provision for direct representation on the council of the man-made fibre producers.
There have also been major technical developments in recent years and these, too, are reflected in the terms of the Order. We find references to bulking, stretch fabrics and warp knitting. The financial changes in the industry's position, following the vertical and horizontal linking to which I referred, have given it much readier access to new capital. This must be of great benefit in a period of rapid technical development and innovation, such as I believe lies ahead.
The present state of the industry was described with clarity and brevity by the chairman of the Shirley Institute at the annual general meeting of that organisation in November, 1965, when he said:
It is commonplace and true to say nowadays that the changes of recent years have transferred the trade into a multi-fibre, multiprocess and capital intensive industry.
I am sure that there is a new, more positive and vigorous outlook in the industry today, largely as a result of developments flowing from the 1959 Act.
I believe, therefore, that it is also against this more recent background that we should discuss the Order. I hope that nothing we say here will appear to detract from the achievements of, or in any way dull the new image of, a modern progressive industry—an image which is being increasingly successfully created by those who work in it. It is, therefore, in a constructive spirit that I address a number of points to the Minister on which it would be helpful for us to have his comments.
In Schedule 2, one of the functions of the new council is to promote or undertake arrangements for encouraging the entry of persons into the industry. This is an important function, because it is a strange contradiction that the industry, even during a period of contraction, has been faced by difficulty in maintaining an adequate strength of skilled personnel. Without doubt, one of the biggest obstacles has been the long-standing and deep-rooted uncertainty about the industry's future. There is today a danger that this uncertainty may grow again, and this could have a particularly unfortunate effect on recruitment at a time when the industry is seeking increasingly to attract men into it and to become primarily a male employing industry.
I have seen Press reports of references by the general secretary of the Weavers' Amalgamation to more than 30 closures in recent months. Within my knowledge, in a comparatively small area of Lancashire 13 mills have gone out of production during the past year.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: Does the hon. Gentleman mean "year" or "month"?

Mr. Hall-Davis: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to express his concern about this later.
Most of these units were small. Announcements of closures at this rate must create uncertainty and hinder recruitment to the industry. These closures also have social consequences disproportionate to the numbers involved, often being situated in communities of some remoteness or in areas faced with an urgent need to increase the attractiveness of the general environment. They should not have such depressing news showered on them.
In reply to a supplementary question last Thursday, the President of the Board of Trade said that he was in touch with the Cotton Board on this matter. Can the Minister of State say how many mills or units have closed in the last 12 months, how many small units remain, and whether the Board of Trade anticipates these closures continuing at the recent rate?
I have no doubt that there is a permanent place for small, specialist units in the textile trade. This is the general view of those best qualified to judge the industry. However, constant publicity for these closures will not help that great part of the industry which is today preparing to face the future successfully. Less apprehension would be felt and expressed and less harm would be done to the recruitment prospects of the industry if those living and working in the areas where these closures are occurring had more grounds for confidence that the Government understand the problems and needs of those districts.
The President of the Board of Trade should take a new and hard look at the desirability of extending to further districts of Lancashire development district status. I have to some extent a personal interest in this matter, which I declare and which is known to the Minister. I am convinced that the case for development area status is as strong in some of these areas of Lancashire today as it is in many areas of the United Kingdom to which the Government have recently extended it. By restoring confidence locally in the economy of these areas, it would assist the progressive textile concerns and be welcomed by them. However, the textile industry is by no means confined within Lancashire.
I will now, as concisely as I can, put some points of wider implication to the Minister of State. I am sure that the council and the industry will, as he has said, be strengthened by the bigger coverage and representation resulting from the wider definition of the industry in the Order, particularly with regard to manmade fibre producers and warp knitting. But, as he suggested, there are many who feel that the council could fulfil its functions better and the industry generally would be strengthened if, in due course, a body could be constituted embracing also the hosiery, lace and woollen textile industries. It would seem that technical evolution will point in this direction.
I therefore hope that the Government will do nothing in their own administrative arrangements and in the allocation of departmental responsibilities to make more difficult the coming together, under the aegis of a single body, these various elements in the broader textile industry if they at some future time decide that it would be to their mutual advantage. We on this side—and this probably applies to the right hon. Gentleman—hope that there will be no question of transferring the Board of Trade's responsibility for the industry and its rôle as sponsoring Department to the Ministry of Technology.
When I was talking to people in the shipbuilding industry the other week, they had very mixed feelings about being removed from what they considered to be—and I pay tribute to it—the careful attention of the Minister of State. I believe that the Ministry of Technology is in grave danger of contracting "takeover indigestion", and the textile industry is an industry in which for some years ahead trade considerations must be paramount.
I hope also that, having widened the composition of the new Textile Council, it will be established that the normal channel of communication between the industry and the Government will be via the council and the Board of Trade as the normal sponsoring Department and there will be no question of bringing into existence further "little Neddies". If one looks at this aspect in relation to the Order, possibly the significance of what I am saying becomes more apparent.
The Cotton Board, with its sub-committees, and now to an even greater extent the Textile Council, has available men with a sufficient breadth of experience to give the Government all the advice which they may need. We hope, also, that the Board of Trade will seek the advice of the council freely and frequently to enable the council to discharge Function 9 in Schedule 2.
May I quote an example where consultation seems to have broken down. There has recently been marked resentment in the industry at the Government's decision to suspend the arrangements for duty-free imports of machinery. It seems ridiculous that when an industry such as the textile industry is trying to make itself capital-intensive to be able to meet low-wage competition, itself enjoying duty-free entry into this country, it should be called upon to pay a 14 per cent. import duty on, say, knitting machinery, which is not available in this country.
I am sorry that the Board of Trade needs a new bureaucracy to administer the investment grants. The risk of this was pointed out by some of us when the Bill was in Committee. But why take it out of industry by dismantling the duty-free import arrangements? If it is not the Board of Trade's need to reshuffle its personnel which is at the root of this decision, I hope that in future the Board of Trade will be more alert to represent this industry's needs to the other Government Department.
Finally, I hope that the Board of Trade will, with this new organ of consultation which is more broadly based available to it, improve its ability to act quickly on the advice which it receives from the council. Industrial and commercial reflexes are becoming faster every day over a world-wide network; so is the speed of transporation of goods. It may be that before very long the industry's biggest difficulties may arise from low-wage sewing machines which are much more difficult to counteract by increased intensification of capital employed in the industry. If the Board of Trade is to be able to give the industry the help which it needs and which its efforts deserve, I believe that the Board will have to quicken the pace of its own actions and reflexes accordingly. Nowhere other than in the textile industry is it easier to be guilty of bolting the door after the horse

has gone, or has switched itself to some other equally comfortable loose box in which to spend its time.
I hope that the Minister will be able to give the House assurances on these points. This is an industry which is very rarely free of cares. I believe, as I have said, that largely due to the 1959 Act the fundamental position today is not perhaps anything like as depressing as some people may think, but for individual areas, individual sectors, there are very real difficulties. I therefore think that it is proper that the House should be given the assurances which I have requested when it is asked to approve an Order of such a comprehensive nature.

8.5 p.m.

Mr. Robert Howarth: Before I turn to particular parts of the Order, I trust that it is in order to make a few general observations to set the debate in its true context. I take the opportunity of paying tribute to the work of the Cotton Board since its inception. It is significant that the Board was established by the first majority Labour Government. It has undoubtedly been very useful and a great help to the industry, and its rôle has been very positive. I wish to place it on record that, while the change to this wider Council will be an improvement, the Cotton Board has, in the last 15, 16 or 17 years, performed a great service for the cotton textile industry.
The cotton textile industry has suffered, not uniquely since the war, but certainly to a degree almost unknown among the old-established industries. There was a period before the early 1950s when, because of the drive on exports, the industry was very much a favoured and busy industry, but since then, under the pressure of cheap textile imports, it has entered a very difficult phase. The rundown has, to say the least been exceedingly drastic.
In my constituency in Bolton, the representation of which I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Oakes), we have seen a once great industry more than halved in manpower and certainly in the number of textile mills. The number of 140 mills which we had in Bolton at the end of the war is now down to approximately 60. This figure is hardly credible until one realises


the changes wrought in the towns of South and South-East Lancashire. I wonder how many areas have had to face this degree of closure in a basic industry. There are constituencies in which the degree of dependence on cotton was even greater than in Bolton and where undoubtedly the changes have been even more painful than in my constituency.
It is worth noting that, despite the most urgent pleas, the Governments of the Conservative Party appeared to ignore the problems of the textile industry —that is, until 1958. Whether this had any connection with the impending election of 1959 is best left to the psephologists, but it was significant to me that for nearly a decade the Governments in London appeared to ignore the great problems of the textile industry in Lancashire. It was only in 1959, when we had this compensation Act, that steps were taken and money was used to try to bring some assistance to this once great industry.
I had the impression that that Act seemed to be more concerned with machines than with people. I recognise that one has to establish the basis of the industry to ensure the prosperity of the people in it, but the Act always seemed to me to operate in such a way that people more easily obtained money for scrapping machines than did the operatives in the industry for their services. I have had occasion in the past, both in this House and in my constituency, to recount the experiences of many of my constituents who lost their jobs, not the younger people, but people of middle-age and older. They lost their jobs after a lifetime of service in the textile industry, and were faced with taking alternative employment at a much lower salary than before, with compensation that was derisory.
When I think of some of the sums being paid under the Redundancy Payments Act of last year, I wish that this Act had been in operation during the time about which I am talking. When people drew about £50 for 50 years' service, we had about reached the bottom in industrial relations in the textile industry. I know that valiant efforts were made by the textile unions, but, working in this difficult situation, they were limited

in what they could do in the way of extracting better compensation terms. The operation of the Redundancy Payments Act has at least assisted many of the people who have been affected by the changes which are still taking place in this industry.
I draw a comparison between the record of this industry and that of the nationalised industries on this problem of contraction. I have read of the great efforts made by the Coal Board to make provision for miners who lose their jobs. I am no expert in this, and I would defer to anyone who is able to enlighten the House on this matter. The terms of compensation and the inducements offered to miners are extremely generous—I hope that I do not embarrass any of the mining union negotiators on this score—compared with the terms offered to textile workers in Lancashire up to the early 'sixities. I hope that we have entered a period in the textile industry in which, even if the changes are to continue, these changes will be more humanely implemented.
I come now to the contemporary period, during which, undoubtedly, the actions of the Labour Government since 1964 have been prompt and relevant, and have engendered a better feeling within the industry. I think it should be said that the Government have made valiant attempts to get a quota system which will give more stability to the industry. Such attempts were totally lacking during the years of Conservative Administration. At least the attempt has been made, and it has been relatively successful in respect of the Commonwealth countries. It is only in respect of countries outside the Commonwealth that many of us are complaining.
We recognise that over the years Britain has taken a very high proportion of cheap textile exports from the developing countries. This has undoubtedly helped them, and no one is suggesting that we should cut these down to the level which many industrial countries permit under their import schemes. The level of consumption of imported cloth in this country is 30 per cent., compared with about 5 per cent. in the E.E.C. countries. It can be seen from that that the burden which we are undertaking is out of proportion to what I think is reasonable.
The difficulties which we now face are a compound of a number of factors. There is first, the point that I made about the global quota. Unfortunately, this does not include countries outside the Commonwealth. Questions have been asked in this House by myself and by other hon. Members about the position of Portugal. The matter is complicated by the fact that as she is a member of E.F.T.A., there are certain restrictions on the action that we might take. Perhaps I might give the House some figures to illustrate the extent to which we have increased the import of cloth from Portugal. The monthly average last year, 1965, was just over 1 million yards. In the first nine months of this year the monthly average was 2½ million yards, and I believe that for September it was more than 3 million yards. It can be appreciated, I hope, that this increase in the level of imports from Portugal is one of the things which is causing problems for the industry.
It is claimed that the Portuguese mills enjoy certain advantages with regard to a possible subsidy for exports to this country, and I should like my right hon. Friend to deal with this when he replies. I am referring now to a report in The Guardian of Tuesday, 15th November, which claimed that certain people in the industry here in this country had information which led them to believe that subsidies of some form were given to textile exports to this country. I imagine that this contravenes the agreements of G.A.T.T. and those between the E.F.T.A. countries.
Coupled with the problem of increased imports from Portugal, there is the problem of increased imports from Formosa. Over the last few years the increase has been quite staggering. From about one million square yards, it has risen in recent times to about 10 million square yards. These may in themselves be relatively small increases in relation to the total amount of cloth used in this country, but if the rate of increase is maintained, they will very quickly come to represent a serious inroad into our textile industry.
The other problem which is worrying the industry at the moment is that of substitution, and I do not doubt that many of my hon. Friends will have something to say about this. We now have, I was going to say a strengthened Cotton Board. We now have a body with a new

title, and a rather clumsy one. I am only sorry that in Committee we could not have worked out a better title for it. We have kept the word "cotton", but I do not see why we could not have retained the old title. Anyway, we now look forward to the Cotton Industry Development Council, and I hope that it will be able to play its part in bringing some further stability into an industry which for so long has been plagued with exceedingly difficult problems.
Paragraph 3 of Schedule 2 of the Order refers to co-operating with the appropriate industrial training boards. I hope that this paragraph will be taken very much to heart by the new Council, and will he quickly implemented so that the training of, and opportunities for, young people are equivalent to those in other industries.
One of the problems has been that for a generation opportunities for employment in the cotton industry have been regarded as of a low standard. They have not always attracted the best-educated youngsters. The level of pay has not always provided an incentive to well-trained and well-educated youngsters to enter the industry. But I hope that on the basis of a planned and well-thought-out training scheme the industry will benefit, as will the people who enter it.
My other comment on Schedule 2 concerns paragraph 17. The only weakness that I want to draw to the attention of the House is that although paragraph 17 talks about
Promoting the developing of export trade including promoting or undertaking arrangements for publicity overseas
it makes no reference to the problem of imports. I do not suggest that the Council could take over any of the functions of the Board of Trade in respect of imports but I had hoped that it might be charged in the Order with the task of watching closely the level of imports, scrutinising the position from month to month, and having express authority to draw to the attention of the Board of Trade certain situations—for instance, the situation that arose this year concerning imports from Portugal. I suppose that the Council will do this in any case, but I think that it should have been written into this document.
I end on a note of optimism. Although the textile industry is again going through


a somewhat difficult period a good foundation has been laid by the efforts of the Government to date on getting agreement on a global quota from Commonwealth countries. If only this could be extended into all those areas in respect of which a danger arises from possibly subsidised imports, or where the level of wages is so low that we cannot possibly compete, even with the most modern machinery, we could look to the future with much more confidence.
Although we have had these difficulties—and my experience is confined primarily to Bolton—where we have lost 70 or 80 mills in this period, we have, owing to our own energy and the money that the local town council was prepared to spend, been able to attract alternative employment on quite a large scale. We have taken over many of these mills. Private individuals and local authorities have rented out space in them. This has brought employers and employment to Bolton. But there are limits to what can be done in this way. Most of these are old buildings, and although we have been successful up to now there is a diminishing return on this type of activity.
We have extended the industrial estate in Bolton and brought new industry into the town, but unless we receive the sort of assistance that an hon. Member opposite mentioned, by which not only development areas benefit but all those old, large industrial towns which are wrestling with difficult problems, we shall not have a viable and attractive future. This stark difference between the assistance given to development areas and to regions outside them is undesirable. There should be shades of assistance. It is all very well to have grandiose plans for new towns such as Skelmersdale and Chorley-Leyland—which latter proposal some people view with great misgivings—but we should also think of existing large towns. Bolton, with its population of 150,000, is not insignificant, and there are other towns with populations between 50,000 and 100,000, which together provide homes for millions of people. The Government should be prepared to divert some resources to these towns in South and East Lancashire.
I hope that, arising from this debate, we shall have assurances, not necessarily on the wider points which have been made—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Eric Fletcher): Order. The hon. Member's argument does not arise under the Order. The Order is limited to the cotton industry.

Mr. Howarth: I am on my last sentence, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I appreciate your tolerance. I was only trying to set the stage for a discussion on the Order.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: On this Order we cannot proceed to a wider discussion.

Mr. Howarth: I am merely saying, as a representative of a cotton town, that our interest in the Order is very direct and intimate. I hope that I have not strayed from the subject under discussion.
Can we look forward to the sort of assurances that have been asked for concerning greater protection in the industry, because of the great inroads of foreign competition, and also concerning the type of assistance that I have just mentioned for the old towns of East and South Lancashire which are facing a very difficult problem?

8.26 p.m.

Sir Frank Pearson: I shall not follow in great detail the speech made by the hon. Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Robert Howarth), nor do I share his optimism in respect of the future of the cotton industry. I cannot help feeling that many hon. Members representing cotton constituencies who will wish to contribute to the debate will find it extremely difficult to be as optimistic as the hon. Member has been.
In general, I welcome the Order, but I have certain reservations. It does not begin to touch upon the real problems of the Lancashire textile industry. I listened to the Minister of State with care, but also with considerable surprise. He introduced the Order in a calm and almost routine tone. I asked myself, "Has the hon. Member ever been to Lancashire in the last fortnight, or even the last two months? Is he aware of the present situation in the industry?" Not a single word of his speech indicated that he had one shred of understanding of the problems facing the Lancashire textile industry today. When he concluded his introduction by saying that the Lancashire textile industry was a large and growing one, I very nearly fell from my seat. Large it may be, but for


a Minister of the Crown to say that the Lancashire textile industry is a growing one will stretch the credulity of even his most ardent supporters.

Mr. Gordon Oakes: My impression was that my right hon. Friend was referring to the textile industry, including the man-made fibre industry, when he described it as a growing one. I would agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says about the cotton industry alone, but I am sure that my right hon. Friend was referring to the whole textile industry.

Sir F. Pearson: I am sure that the Minister of State will be able to defend himself.
Before we agree to the Order, it is important that we recognise the situation within the industry that the new Council must cope with. It is an extremely serious situation. Hon. Members opposite will throw back in our faces the situation in the textile industry in 1961–62. They may even throw back at us the state of the industry in the years before the 1959 reorganisation, but it must be recognised that the reorganisation measures introduced in 1959 did a magnificent job.
I take this opportunity of paying a genuine and heartfelt tribute to the manner in which the Lancashire industry has reorganised itself on the basis of the 1959 provisions. It has done a magnificent job. The fact that hundreds of mills had to go out of production in those years has in the end been justified. The fact that hundreds of mills re-equipped themselves has also been justified.
The situation today is vastly different from that which existed in 1961–62, when many old, worn-out mills filled with old Lancashire looms were going out. It was right that they should. Today it is mills of substantial size, mills on which hundreds of thousands of £s have been spent during the past six years, which are closing down and going out of business. I urge the Minister of State to recognise that he has a very different situation on his hands today from that which obtained in 1961–62.
The type of mill which is running on short-time, the type of mill which is closing down, is all too often a mill which has been modernised. This is very

worrying. Until I am given some indication that the Minister of State appreciates what the real trouble is, I shall not be able to express the all too optimistic views which we have heard expressed tonight.
What is the situation in my own area, in the Blackburn area, and in the areas which the hon. Members for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) and Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones) knows so well? Out of 38 mills in that area, 27 are on short shift. In those mills shifts have been knocked down. Short-time has been worked. In that area in the last year alone three mills of substantial size have closed down and three more are in the process—

Mr. Sydney Silverman: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman noticed the Answer which my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour gave me less than a week ago, not about short-time, but about fully registered unemployed. My right hon. Friend showed that in the last three months the number of unemployed in my own constituency has risen by 101 per cent. whereas unemployment in the country as a whole has risen by 71 per cent.

Sir F. Pearson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution, which underlines the seriousness of the situation. In the mills which have been closed in this area alone, no fewer than 500 textile operatives have been made redundant. This is no small matter in a small area. The terms in which the Minister of State introduced the Order showed that he is out of touch with the situation in the Lancashire textile industry at present.
I want to quote one further instance to the House. I have in my constituency one of the most modern, one of the best, one of the most efficient, one of the most highly mechanised, mills in the country, producing specialist sheeting which is sold under a branded name known world-wide. It is a mill into which hundreds of thousands of £s have been poured since 1959. What did the firm do the other day? It shut down the whole of one new shed and paid off 160 operatives, and it can see no hope at the present time of being able to set that shed going again—

Mr. Arnold Gregory: In dealing with a sheeting material, which is the most vulnerable of weaving processes in the industry—with 40 per cent.


imports and only 8 per cent. penetration into European markets—from low-cost importing countries would not the hon. Gentleman think that the Government with which he was identified between 1951 and 1959 bore a tremendous responsibility for that kind of exposure?

Sir F. Pearson: I do not accept that suggestion at all. Why have we this situation today? Why is the industry in this weak trading position? It is more or less the same old story that we had in 1961 and 1962. There are three factors —the downturn in the world textile cycle, which coincides with a freeze and a squeeze in the home economy, together with the full use of the quota flooding the country with imports. Those are the basic reasons.
We will never set the situation right, we will never find a solution, as long as we try to depend on the quota system. With the quota system, one thing happens and one thing only. When the country is in a situation of weak trading owing to a contraction of the home economy, or to any other reason, the quotas are invariably used to their fullest extent and dominate the market, and they dominate the market on the price structure of the imported commodity. We will invariably get short-time, retraction, and instability in the home industry as long as we try to operate on a quota basis.
Measures could be taken to improve what is basically an imperfect method. Far too often, new imports flood in and ruin the market before the Board of Trade even knows that they are coming in. Is it not possible so to improve the machinery that the Board of Trade becomes aware of what is coming into the country very much earlier than has been the case in the past. I say quite frankly that by the time the Board of Trade wakens up to excessive imports, the imports have come in and the damage has been done.
There is another vitally important point. Today, the people who are importing cotton textiles into this country are concentrating on one type of cloth, one category, and knocking it out of the market. That is happening with sheetings. When we were in power we introduced a system of categorisation. It was not perfect, but I urge the Board of Trade to

see whether it cannot be made more perfect. Unless we can put a check on this system whereby specific and narrow categories of cloth are attacked by imports and knocked out of the market we shall never get stability in the Lancashire textile industry.
I have mentioned this firm in my constituency which has had to close down this modernised shed for the manufacture of sheetings which have ben sold throughout the world under a branded name. What has knocked it out? It is not Portugal, but an attack from the Hong Kong end concentrating on the sheetings market. Until the Board of Trade wakens up to this fact and take measures which will prevent categories of cloth being knocked out altogether, we shall not get any stability at all.
The hon. Member for Bolton, East mentioned Portugal. Portugal is outside the all-in quota—which I never thought would work, and still do not think will work. The problem of Portugal is two-fold—the rates of wages there are about a sixth of ours and, secondly, Portugal is a member of E.F.T.A. We cannot do this except by voluntary agreement, and voluntary agreement must be achieved. It is no good the President of the Board of Trade saying he is having talks—all the time he is having talks the cloth is coming in and ruining the market. I believe that a figure of 3 million yards in September has been mentioned. This will go on. This is a matter of the greatest urgency, and it is no good the Minister of State coming to the House tonight and putting this Order before us—

Mr. Joel Barnett: rose—

Sir F. Pearson: Just a minute. Sit down.

Mr. Barnett: Really.

Sir F. Pearson: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to finish my sentence, I will give way.
It really is no good the Minister of State coming to the House and introducing this Order in calm, measured, routine terms. There is a real problem which has to be dealt with. If it is not dealt with, the Lancashire textile industry will contract and contract. I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Barnett: No, I will not intervene now.

Sir F. Pearson: There is one other aspect of this textile question which I would ask the House to consider. We have talked about the profitability of the industry and the efficiency of the industry, but there is the human side of the people who have been flung out of work. I would make one appeal: I do hope that the Minister will recognise the fact that in the textile industry we have a very high proportion of older people, and when those older people are flung out of a job—a woman of 58 or a man of 61—under present-day conditions there is practically no hope of fitting them in anywhere else, and these men and women will probably have to face a number of years of unemployment pay, waiting for the time when they will be due to receive their pensions.
In an industry like this, where it is running down, where old labour is being put off, would it not be reasonable to give advance payment of pension? Cannot we make the age for men 60 and the age for women 55? The Treasury would benefit, and this is something which genuinely ought to be considered.
I do not wish to detain the House much longer, but I have one further point to make. It is in regard to paragraph 9 of Schedule 2 of the Order. I am a little worried about the words in brackets:
Advising on any matters relating to the industry (other than remuneration or conditions of employment)…
My recollection of the old Cotton Board is that When the industry was worried or concerned about the state of trade it would present the view of the industry. It would come down to the House and would tell us exactly what the situation was.
Am I to understand, from paragraph 9 of Schedule 2, that it will no longer be the function of the new Council to state the case of the profitability of the industry to the Board of Trade? This is an important point, because if the Council is not the mouthpiece of the industry, and if the Council is not in a position to argue the case, then I cannot think that the Council will be able to perform one of its most important and vital jobs.
I therefore hope that the Minister will give us an assurance before the debate

ends that this Council is the mouthpiece of the industry as a whole in placing the case of the industry before the Government. If he cannot give us that assurance, and I do not see it written in specific terms in the Schedule, then the textile industry in Lancashire will have no mouthpiece, and that will be a tragedy.

8.43 p.m.

Mr. J. T. Price: I do not propose to detain the House for more than a few moments, because I think that already my right hon. Friend the Minister of State may be viewing with some surprise the size of the gate he has opened tonight by presenting this rather innocent Order. I was looking at it before the debate began, and I was thinking how non-controversial the Order appeared to be. There are so few occasions for Lancashire Members to present on the Floor of the House what are real bread-and-butter problems of our people that we seize upon any straw that falls on to that Table in order to get a word in edgeways.
I do not wish to say anything disrespectful to other colleagues in the House, on whichever side they sit, but we have Scottish days, we have Welsh days, we have all kinds of special categories of days, and I have no doubt that we shall have an Irish day before long. I do not object, but my point is that the County Palatine of Lancaster. with all its great historical and industrial traditions, the part of Europe where the Industrial Revolution began, where the commercial supremacy of this country was founded, has had to face its difficulties without half the consideration which other pressure groups in the House have been able to bring upon the counsels of Parliament. I shall not pursue that theme, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You have heard me often enough get rather passionate about matters which some people prefer to talk about in a genteel way and sotto voce. I would prefer vigorous debate in this House on anything coming before us which has real life in it.
We have had one or two party cracks tonight. When we began, I hoped that we might have a bipartisan approach to this matter and that we should forget the animosities which, naturally, flow from that side of the House to this and vice versa on occasions. We are here


discussing a great basic industry and a very important section of the community, and I hoped that we might still view many of these matters in a bipartisan frame of mind.
I look at these questions, I hope, without passion. I look upon them in the light of my experience in the House since I first came here. In the past, I have sat up all night in the Chamber, with my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman)—I do not know whether any others were with us who are here now—

Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: Yes.

Mr. Price: I remember one occasion when my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock) was suspended from the House for five days because of a row which developed during an all-night sitting on the Lancashire textile industry.
But enough of reminiscences tonight. We are looking to the future, and the Order presents some hope for the future in the machinery of administration. But, as I took the opportunity to say to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade last Thursday, I think it was, when he was sitting there looking like Pontius Pilate and he would not be drawn to say anything, the way in which the cotton industry is being treated now, with neglect by the Government in certain respects, if I may say so, is producing a situation in which there may not be sufficient industry to which to apply the elaborate machinery in the Order to in the years to come. I hope I am wrong, but that is my fear.
The hon. Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson) spoke of what ought to be done. He thinks that the quota system is breaking down. To a large extent, I agree. The global quota system is breaking down because of the ruthless substitution and the clever technical devices being adopted by exporters in the Far East, in Portugal and in other parts of the world, to the detriment of the Lancashire cotton industry. But the hon. Gentleman did not go very far in the direction of telling us what ought to be done.
I remember times in the past when conditions were bad, when we had had periods of recession, the sort of thing with which we are all familiar, but, when we pressed previous Tory administrations, we did not get very far. We had a long period under Conservative Government before this Labour Government came in, and whenever we pressed them for physical controls they always resisted pretty strongly. They resisted very strongly the imposition of an import board. Many of us regard this as the real solution to the problem, an import board under Government control which could bring some sense into the industry. We are not asking for protection in the crude sense—

Mr. F. Blackburn: We are asking for it.

Mr. Price: All right, have it your own way. I am not being fussy about phraseology tonight. I want to sit down in a short time to let somebody else make a contribution to the debate. I know that an hon. Member from Cheshire is sitting behind me and that Cheshire adjoins Lancashire and is a very important part of the world. Let me not be deflected by my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn). I know that he wants to help us later on.
I want to say something now on the practical remedies: (a) we should have an import board; (b) there should be an end to substitition, the clever devices being used by legalistic means to get round the machinery already established; and, (c) we should never have any more bilateral trade agreements, even under Government supervision. They were a complete fiasco in the case of Hong Kong and some Far Eastern countries.

Mr. F. A. Burden: The hon. Member seems to lose sight of the fact that Hong Kong imports more from us than she exports to us.

Mr. Charles Mapp: At Lancashire's expense.

Mr. Burden: That is the real position, and in accounting for these things we have to consider this balance.

Mr. Price: I am very grateful to the hon. Member for giving me such valuable information. I know the situation, and I know the alibi of every Government.


Let us be honest about it. No party has clean hands in this. The Tory Party's record was bad in its years in office and ours is not as good as I would like it to be up to the present. Therefore, we are pressing the people who have control in the Government Departments to stir themselves, pull up their socks and do a hit more.
The hon. Member for Clitheroe developed the idea of the quotas. I consider that in the near future some of our friends at the Board of Trade will be called upon to deal with the Kennedy Round. That is the system inaugurated by the late President Kennedy to liberalise the trade of Europe, to bring down the tariff barriers lower than they have been brought down in the European Economic Community, of which we are not members at present.
But that is in the future. Some of the stuff at present flooding British markets is from Portugal, where there are very low wage standards of manufacture, to which other hon. Members have referred. Labour in this country could not compete, and even the most modern machinery in certain categories could not compete. We shall not be able to compete and yet Portugal is getting over a tariff wall of 17½ per cent. ad valorem now imposed by the Board of Trade upon her imports into this country. I think that I am correct in saying that. If I am wrong, the Minister of State will put me right. Portugal is, of course, a member of E.F.T.A., and I am asking that there should be investigation of—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Gillingham will restrain his impetuosity, if he wants to make a contribution to the debate, let him stand up and try to catch Mr. Speaker's eye.
I put seriously to my right hon. Friend that when the negotiations take place we must have in mind that a crude application of the Kennedy Round on existing tariffs might further aggravate the adverse position in Lancashire vis-à-vis imports into this country. I shall not say anything more illiberal than that, and I hope that I shall be forgiven for saying it tonight.
I know how sensitive Board of Trade Ministers always become, whatever side of politics they originate from. Every Board of Trade Minister that I have

known—I have known very many and have had pretty good relations with most of them after a bit of knocking about—has been very sensitive when anybody uses the word "dumping" here. It is a dirty word. But I maintain that a great deal of the dumping of goods in this country falls within the existing legislation if only some Ministers would bestir themselves and undertake the use of those instruments, if they could do so in accordance with the law.
I believe that a great deal of cotton goods are being dumped and that we are getting many imports that we do not need. They are disrupting our domestic market, taking 30 per cent. of it as against 4 per cent. in Europe. It is not fair competition —it is unfair.
If the Minister of State had full rein, if he had full charge of the horse, as he has not, I believe that he would agree that we are justified in bringing to his notice, in as vigorous a fashion as we can without being unfair, that Lancashire is not having a fair crack of the whip at present. We support this Order and we hope that the industry will be helped to get out of its present troubles and that the Order will be really effective under the new Development Council.

8.55 p.m.

Mr. Charles Fletcher-Cooke: Whatever the title of this new body may be, I feel sure that it will always be known as the "Cotton Board". This is, perhaps, the best tribute that could be paid to the work of an organisation which has been for many years unique, uniquely successful in presenting to the world a united front of capital, management and labour. The differences in this industry, as far as industrial relations are concerned, are so small as to be a model to the rest of the country. Even though it has been contracting and there have been redundancies, there have been none of the acerbities and abrasive qualities which, in other industries, seem to produce a great many strikes.
Therefore, the Board and those engaged in the industry have a great deal to congratulate themselves about and it is right that their power and activities should be extended. I do not think that the proportions of numbers of trade unionists, employers or independents matters much because, in fact, we look


at these things through the same pair of spectacles—and no one could call those spectacles rose-tinted tonight.
It was not recognised in the Minister of State's speech that there has been a fairly sudden collapse over the last month in confidence and in the state of the order books, particularly at the weaving end of the industry, and this has come upon the industry at a time when the number of alternative jobs available is at its lowest. This, I think, is what distinguishes this slump—I have to use the word, but I hope that the slump will be short—from many other slumps. First, it comes at a time when it is not possible to get jobs in other industries and, secondly and even more important as a distinction, as my hon. Friend the Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson) pointed out, it comes particularly to concerns which have modernised themselves.
When the Cotton Reorganisation Scheme went through, a great deal of private and public money was spent and invested in new machinery in the mills that survived. A great deal of shift working was initiated and, therefore, a slump now is far more serious than before 1959, when the machinery did not require to be serviced as far as capital charges were concerned and when one could shut down a shed consisting largely of Lancashire looms without the enormous overheads that now fall upon a concern that has put in very expensive two or three-shift working machinery.
That is why I do not think that it really assists us to hark back to the past. This is now a high-geared industry instead of a low-geared industry. The consequences of not running continuously are different in kind as well as different in quantity from what they used to be.
This situation also comes at a time, ironically, when the world consumption of cotton and the use of cotton is growing. A great many people seem to think that the cotton industry and the cotton trade are doomed to extinction through the march and progression of events. That is not borne out by the experience of the world as a whole—very much the reverse. Even here, the proportions of cotton found to man-made fibres and other modern substitutes is still very high. In any case, the whole of the textile industry is one in which consumption is growing.
There are, therefore, three reasons to my mind as to why this sudden slump comes at the worst possible time, and I suggest that measures which would not normally be considered ought to be taken by the Government as a matter of urgency. We are coming also to a time when many of the barriers to foreign imports are suddenly being lowered. There is the elimination of the E.F.T.A. tariff walls and the removal of the imports surcharge. A whole lot of water is up against the dam which, in these next few weeks, is about to burst.
For that reason, I seriously suggest to the Minister of State that he takes back to the Government the message that it is not enough, as the hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) so eloquently said, to produce machinery for the governance of an industry which will not be there to govern unless some action is taken soon. There is nothing in the Order to give any encouragement.
It behoves us all, when we make these criticisms, to make suggestions, and I echo the suggestion of the hon. Member for Westhoughton—and always have—that the Board of Trade should abandon its attitude of being a sort of passive umpire on the question of dumping. Whenever one sends to the Board of Trade complaints about dumping or unfair competition, it immediately takes a neutral position. "Show me your evidence", it says, knowing quite well that it is only through the Government, through Government sources of intelligence and through the Government machine, that most people can find out the evidence of dumping.
Yet people feel it in their bones. I believe that 75 per cent. of the time they are right but it cannot be proved to the satisfaction of the Board of Trade. It is really for the Board of Trade to help people to prove it, to be active in helping them to prove their case and to take the initiative. It should say, "We have received your complaint, and will follow it up, and if we can find any evidence, will let you know".
Portugal has been mentioned during the debate, and I would like to mention another E.F.T.A. country, about which there is great suspicion that there is concealed subsidy and dumping. It is Austria. It is particularly easy for Austria to do


this because a certain amount of the Austrian textile industry is nationalised. One knows very well that accounting in nationalised industries is often on a different basis, and can be presented in a different form. I am trying not to be partisan about this, but accounts can be presented in such a way as to conceal the true position much more easily than in a privately-owned concern.
For that reason I particularly ask the Minister of State to see whether the Austrians are not manipulating, to use a pejorative word—but he knows what I mean—the accounting system of their nationalised textile industry to secretly subsidis,— perhaps not so seceretly—the imports into this country, which have grown up very suddenly, of Austrian yarn and cloth. We must ask the Minister of State to do this tonight. I hope that in his reply he will at least say that in future the Board of Trade will abandon its neutral attitude towards complaints about dumping and secret subsidies.
There, without any breach of international agreements that may have been entered into, or of the complex of E.F.T.A. and the global quota and all the rest of it, the Board of Trade could strike a great blow for the domestic manufacturer. It would be a perfectly legal blow, because there is nothing in any of these agreements forcing the Board of Trade to take this passive, neutral, almost suspicious attitude to many complaints about dumping and secret subsidies. If he can make a declaration of intent that in future the Board of Trade will constitute itself the prisoner's friend rather than the prosecutor, the Minister of State will have done a good turn.

9.5 p.m.

Mr. Joel Barnett: I agree with much that the hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) has said, certainly that there will be a serious effect upon the cotton textile industry in Lancashire because of the removal of the surcharge and the fact that on 1st January the E.F.T.A. tariffs will become nil. In addition, my hon. Friend the Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) has referred to the Kennedy Round, which is very important. I honestly wondered what it was the hon. and learned Gentleman had in mind to

deal with those matters. I hope that he was not suggesting, as indeed, I hope my hon. Friend was not suggesting anything other than a liberal, with a small "I" approach to these matters. I am sure that he was not suggesting that we do not proceed as fast as we can to bring the Kennedy Round negotiations to a successful conclusion.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: One of the advantages of the lowering of the tariffs, in Europe, for example, to the outside world would be to take away some of the load that we bear upon imports into this country from other continents. Once the Kennedy Round is agreed, if it is, then the Continent of Europe will be obliged to take more than a derisory amount of 5 per cent., or whatever it is, as against our 40 per cent.

Mr. Barnett: The hon. and learned Gentleman is very optimistic about the Kennedy Round negotiations. I hope that he is right, but I fear that it is unlikely that the outcome will be as he envisages. The best that we can look for is perhaps a cut in the tariffs. There is no question of touching quotas in the present negotiations' as I read them. However, I agree entirely with his point about the burden being borne by Lancashire. He spoke about the surcharge and E.F.T.A., but I do not know what he was suggesting should be put in its place.

Mr. J. T. Price: Unless other adjustments are made, when we become more closely linked with Europe, as many people think we ought to be, I shall consider it my duty to raise my voice against further discrimination against our native industry in Lancashire by the removal of tariffs which are the only safeguard that we have against unfair competition. I shall want wide adjustments making, including the liberalisation of the share of trade absorbed by Europe as against the 30 per cent. that we are absorbing. I hope that I will not be a Liberal any more.

Mr. Barnett: I would add my voice to that of my hon. Friend. Something should be done for the Lancashire that we both represent.
The hon. and learned Gentleman referred to Austria and I would like to take up this point. There is ample evidence that many textile made-up goods coming from Austria are certainly not produced


in that country—at least not in their entirety. They may well have come from Eastern European countries and elsewhere. I hope that my hon. and right hon. Friends, will look very closely into this. This is something about which we in Lancashire and those of us who represent Lancashire feel very strongly.
In presenting this Order the Minister of State stuck rather rigidly to his brief. I object to nothing in the Order. What I object to is what is not in it. My right hon. Friend said that this is not merely another Cotton Board. That may be, but those of us who have read the Order would be tempted to say that it is not much else to deal with Lancashire's problems. I have no wish to exaggerate the situation, which can be done if we are not careful. The percentage of unemployed in Lancashire is lower than the country's average. We should be grateful for that, but those of us who were home last weekend will know that there is coming about already a degree of short-time and unemployment in various mills. It certainly applies in my constituency.
In introducing an Order like this, when we have very little opportunity to discuss Lancashire's affairs or the textile industry, I was surprised that my right hon. Friend did not refer to the industry's present fears. I know that the Order does not specifically deal with these other matters, but he should have been aware of them.
In my constituency I was recently at a dinner of Lancashire and Yorkshire textile employers, who were frightened by the present situation and gave me their grounds for their fears. Of course, this is nothing like so depressing as the situations we have experienced, but we should not be complacent about the present situation. In answer to a series of Questions about Portuguese imports, on 8th December, the President of the Board of Trade said:
…. I have very much in mind"—
the question of the problem of the Portuguese imports.
…I have discussed this with the Portuguese Minister of Trade… I am constantly reminding the Portuguese Government…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th December. 1966; Vol. 737, c. 1549.]
He is constantly doing something and has it in mind, but what is he doing about this problem?
Reading and re-reading his Answers to these Questions, I could find evidence of no positive action which he is taking to allay the fears of hon. Members for Lancashire constituencies or the people in its textile industry. One must be inclined to ask, apart from what the President of the Board of Trade has in mind and is discussing with Portuguese Ministers, exactly what will happen? The hon. Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson) said that anything we do must be based on voluntary methods, and he added that we have got to do something. Precisely what that was intended to mean, I do not know—

Sir F. Pearson: My point was that the Government have no other methods available than voluntary methods. If they cannot get the Portuguese to limit their exports voluntarily, they will not get those exports limited at all.

Mr. Barnett: The hon. Gentleman may be prepared to accept that if the Portuguese Government do nothing about it we should simply allow it to go on, but I certainly am not. If we cannot get voluntary agreement, I should be prepared to suggest that we take some action other than voluntary. Many people in Lancashire will find it odd that, while we stand by and watch the Portuguese Government take action against our efforts to obtain a reasonable settlement in Rhodesia, at the same time we allow them to ruin the Lancashire textile industry.
If we are told that we should leave it to voluntary methods to allow whatever the Portuguese are prepared to send into Lancashire—incidentally, using similar methods to those used in Austria, with goods coming from Eastern Europe and being made up in Portugal and then exported to Britain at the expense of Lancashire—I am not satisfied to accept whatever voluntary agreement we can get with with the Portuguese and the people of Lancashire are entitled to expect us not to settle for that voluntary agreement.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to assure us that the agreement which we get with Portugal will be satisfactory. If we cannot get a satisfactory one under voluntary arrangements, I hope that he will do something off his own bat. We have been trodden on too much by Portugal, even though it is our


oldest ally. When the Portuguese can please themselves, and we have to take whatever exports they choose to send, voluntary agreements are not something to which we can agree.
I hope that my right hon. Friend will show more energy. I advise him to reread the debate in August, 1962, on the industry, which was very interesting. There were some interesting speeches from a few of the present Cabinet Ministers —my right hon. Friends the Members for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) and Rossendale (Mr. Greenwood), for example—I am sure they will be interesting to my right hon. Friend. I hope that he will take them to heart.
This question of Portuguese exports of textiles is not, of course, the whole answer. Another suggestion was made by my right hon. Friends, to whom I referred—the arguments for an import commission, for example.
I put a Question to my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade a few days ago and the Answer I received was, to say the least, somewhat discourteous. I asked:
Can he tell us when he expects to be able to fulfil the pledge to set up an Imports Commission?
He replied:
I would refer my hon. Friend to the Order on the Textile Council which we shall be moving in this House next week."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 8th December, 1966; Vol. 737, c. 1549.]
What did that have to do with the Question I asked? To put it mildly, my right hon. Friend was evading the point, which is discourteous when one considers that this is not a matter that should be evaded, particularly as it is one of the pledges we gave. The argument for the establishment of an Imports Commission has been adduced for many years and is as valid today as it ever was. The need for some control over the quantities being released at any one time—assuming that one allows even the present level of imports—is obviously necessary.
One must consider the effect of a great volume of imports coming in, in relation to prices, for example. I hope that the Minister will tonight give a valid reason why the Government have not introduced legislation to set up an Imports Commission. So far we have merely had references to something which in

no way deals with the fact that we gave a specific pledge to establish such a commission.
To introduce this Order and not, at the same time, to refer to the need for such a Commission and the other problems of the industry is astonishing. I trust, therefore, that my right hon. Friend will say more in reply to the debate than he said in his opening speech. What action do the Government envisage to help the Lancashire textile industry, which has suffered in the hands of successive Governments?
That does not mean that employers should simply sit back and complain.
I hope that mill owners, small and large, who have for a long time complained at the fact that manufacturers making up garments have taken foreign goods, will bear in mind that they, too, have a responsibility in this matter. Anybody with knowledge of the industry knows that when the trade is busy the attitude of mill owners and executives to the makers-up is, "Take it or leave it. It will be probably nine months before we can deliver. If you do not like it, go elsewhere". And then, when a slump comes, they are surprised to find that the manufacturers have literally gone elsewhere. Mill owners should change their attitude in the conditions that exist today.
Having said that, and without wishing to exaggerate the state of the industry, there is a need for the Board of Trade to assure the whole industry, and those we represent in Lancashire and Cheshire, that they will see that the textile areas are not allowed to suffer as they have in the past.

9.22 p.m.

Mr. F. A. Burden: I intervene briefly and, in doing so, declare my interest because while I am not a manufacturer of piece goods, my company has for 150 years been one of the biggest distributors of textiles in Britain. Whenever we possibly can, we always buy British textiles. I fully understand the passion with which hon. Members who represent Lancashire constituencies speak about the industry and the interests of their constituents. At the same time, we must try to bring a sense of reality into this debate; and as a big distributor perhaps I will be able to make certain useful observations.
The dumping of textiles into this country has been mentioned. How does one determine whether goods are dumped? It is all very well to talk about dumping, but if wages are lower in another country or if the workers in that country are prepared to work longer hours than we are—so that the goods from that country can be sent here more cheaply—is that dumping? Must they not send anything to us unless they are working the same number of hours as we are and unless they carry out the same restrictive practices as we do? In other words, can we insulate the Lancashire textile industry from the liberalisation of world trade that is fast coming about?
With our desire to join the E.E.C., should we not realise that duties will be lifted and that there will be a far greater freedom of trade? Should all the goods coming from the factories in other countries be jeopardised because we refuse to buy them? Should the people of Portugal and other E.F.T.A. countries not send us goods because they can produce them more cheaply or because they can offer better value for price than we can? Why are textile distributors forced to go abroad to buy grey cloth to turn into sheetings? The answer is because they are of a standard and type that can be bought more cheaply overseas. That is why we are importing grey cloth and converting it into sheets in this country.
We are doing this only because we are forced to do it. If we did not do it, we should run into the position which the hon. Member for Heywood and Royton has said we have experienced in the past: deliveries would clog up; we should have to pay higher prices; we certainly would not be competitive in the world markets with our sheets; and the British public would have to pay more.
Hon. Members opposite have referred to Hong Kong, which is a British Crown Colony. If the people there can produce certain cotton textiles cheaply, then Hong Kong gets a Commonwealth Preference Certificate. In future, they will be no better off than Portugal or any other E.F.T.A. country which sends us textiles. Hong Kong is a very good market for British merchandise.

Mr. Barnett: indicated dissent.

Mr. Burden: Yes, it is. I have been through the factories in Hong Kong. I was there two months ago. There is a very considerable import of British goods into Hong Kong. Would the hon. Gentleman prefer that Hong Kong should not be prosperous and that we should pour out money to Hong Kong in aid?

Mr. Barnett: I, too, have visited Hong Kong. I accept that it is no fault of the Hong Kong Government that we are not exporting more to them. But we have an unfavourable trade balance with Hong Kong. All that I am suggesting, and all that the people in Lancashire would suggest, is that other countries should take a fair share. That is all we are asking for, not that we in Britain should be taking a much greater proportion of imports from under-developed countries.

Mr. Burden: What does the hon. Gentleman mean by "a fair share"? Does he mean a fair share of Lancashire's products? Is that what he is saying?

Hon. Members: No.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: What we on this side of the House who represent Lancashire constituencies want is that Lancashire people should not remain unemployed in order to keep people in Hong Kong employed.

Mr. Burden: This is very interesting. Hon. Members opposite might like to know that Hong Kong is earning enormous amounts of American dollars. All the big American buying houses which have moved into Hong Kong are buying in a very big way.
It is all very well for hon. Members opposite to say, "But look at Portugal. Portugal is a member of E.F.T.A., but we demand that something should be done to stop her sending to us her cotton exports". Are we to do this with every industry which is threatened as a result of our going into E.F.T.A.? If so, then we should get out of E.F.T.A. and become an isolated trading unit. If that were to happen, we should soon be in very considerable difficulties. The position will not be improved if we go into the Common Market. It will become even more competitive and difficult.
Lancashire should go out of the ordinary weaves and into high quality cottons such as are still produced and sold by Switzerland where costs are just as high as they


are here. If Lancashire goes in for high quality fashion cottons, there is a future for her. But I do not believe that there is a future for her if she tries to compete in the same categories in which the Portuguese and the lower-cost countries produce their goods.

Mr. Geoffrey Hirst: What we have argued in the House time and again, and what we are arguing again, is whether this country should be called upon to take so large a share of the world's markets vis-à-vis other countries. That is the point.

Mr. Burden: It is difficult to say how we are to determine what these amounts should be. We are endeavouring to extend our exports everywhere and at the same time Members are saying, "But we must restrict the exports of other countries to us". This is the analogy of that remark. But surely what hon. Gentlemen opposite are complaining about so bitterly is merely a continuation of the policy of shake-out, of which the Prime Minister said the Government were in favour? He said that we must accept that many of our older and old-established industries would disappear in the shape of things to come, and that people in industries which could no longer compete in world markets would have to leave them and go into industries which could compete in world markets and provide us with our exports.
This is part of the tragedy, and the responsibility for much of it lies on the benches opposite.

9.30 p.m.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: I am very grateful for the opportunity of contributing to this debate, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving us the opportunity of having it at all, not because I have anything very profound or intelligent to say about the Order which he is asking the House to approve tonight, but because, as has been said already, it gives the House of Commons one of its very rare opportunities of discussing a local problem which is rapidly approaching catastrophic conditions.
The constituency which I represent in this House is not Hong Kong. I have represented it for a generation, and until very recent years out of every three

people in that constituency who worked at all, two worked in the cotton textile industry. We are not quite so badly off today. It is no longer two-thirds of the working population, but it is still 50 per cent., or nearly so.
When the hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) talks about the Government's policy of a shake-out, of getting people out of inessential industries into more essential ones, will he endeavour to bear in mind that Lancashire has been doing this for the better part of 50 years? We are not an over-manned industry. We have never been an overmanned industry. Until June of this year we had reached a situation when there was a shortage of labour, and a policy designed to produce a shake-out will presumably not be regarded as necessary in an industry or a constituency where there is already a shortage of labour.
It is very tempting on one of these very rare opportunities to review the whole dismal and lugubrious tale, but I must resist the temptation to do so. I want to focus on the present position, and on the Government's direct responsibility for it.
We were doing well. Whatever may be thought of the reconstruction scheme which began in 1958, or whatever may be said about the motivation of it, or the prior neglect, by both major parties, of what used to be the principal exporting industry of this country, what is true is that it was producing an improvement, and by June of this year there was not merely a shortage of labour, there was not merely rapid and quite extensive modernisation, which is what we have been crying out for for 30 or 40 years, but there was a certain degree of prosperity.
I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade is not here. He should have been. His answers to Questions not merely of mine, but of others, show a lamentable complacency and a lamentable ignorance of the present situation in Lancashire. It would have done him a lot of good if he had been here and heard the valuable speeches that have been made by non. Members on both sides of the House in this debate. I did not agree with all of them. I agreed with many, but with some I did not agree at all. But whether or not I agreed I want to avoid any danger of


repeating points which have already been valuably and usefully made.
What is the position today, compared with the much more satisfactory one which existed as recently as June of this year? I asked the Minister of Labour a week ago what the increase in unemployment in Nelson and Colne had been over the last three months and how it compared with the rate of increase in the United Kingdom as a whole. The reply was quite shocking. Over that three months, unemployment in Nelson and Colne increased by 101 per cent. In the country as a whole over the same period it increased by 71 per cent. So, in this constituency, unemployment rose half as much again as it did for the whole country.
What is the good of the hon. Gentleman's saying, as the President of the Board of Trade said to me the other day, that the rate of unemployment is still below the national average? If that rate of increase goes on, for how long will it be below the national average? Are we to wait until it is above the national average before we do anything to stop it? It is time that the President of the Board of Trade turned his attention to this matter. It is time that he knew what was going on.
In an Answer to me my right hon. Friend said that although some mills had been closed they were old-fashioned mills —mills that were not modernised. This is not true. The figures that the Minister of Labour quoted were the figures of registered unemployed. Anyone who knows anything about this problem knows that the figures of registered unemployed in the Lancashire cotton industry are misleading and unrepresentative, for two reasons. First, they do not include part-time work, and secondly, they do not include women workers, because they do not usually contribute in their own right to social security provisions and are therefore not included in the Ministry of Labour registered figures. But they are still unemployed.
If a man and a woman are working, and both lose their jobs, it is not only one income that has gone; both have gone. No figure of unemployed is realistic which does not have some method of correction or adjustment in respect of

workers who are not registered—women workers, on the one hand, and part-time workers, on the other. There was an element of truth in my right hon. Friend's statement that some of the factories that closed were the old-fashioned and unmodernised ones, but the most highly modernised and really wealthy ones are the ones which have gone off on short time.
The Government have a special responsibility for this, because every one of their Measures—I am not debating now whether they were right or wrong in general, though everybody knows that I was no supporter of them in any case—for dealing with the economic imbalance in our trade has been especially damaging to the cotton industry. I will take them one by one. First, I have already pointed out—I need not repeat it—that, in so far as S.E.T. was intended to shake out workers from industries where they are not necessary so that they would find new and different employment in industries where they are more necessary, it could not possibly have applied to the Lancashire cotton textile industry where there was already a shortage of labour.
In this industry many of the producers are small family concerns with limited financial resources. I know that it will be said that the S.E.T. taxes paid by them will ultimately be repaid.

Mr. Barnett: They will be repaid with a premium.

Mr. Silverman: Yes, but when? Where are these people to get the money in the meantime in circumstances when the Government prevent them from borrowing it from the banks?

Mr. Barnett: Perhaps my hon. Friend is not aware that banks, in my experience, have not been backward in helping to provide finance to manufacturing industries.

Mr. Silverman: That is not my information. My information is that the credit squeeze has been one of the direct causes of many of the smaller factories closing down and going out of business altogether.

Mr. Barnett: No.

Mr. Silverman: All I am saying is, not that my information is correct, but only that it is my information. It comes


to me from the mouths of people who are most directly concerned. [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Barnett) must stop making interruptions from a sedentary position.

Mr. Silverman: The Government's Measures have been especially hard to bear in an industry of this kind. There has been no attempt by the Government to relieve the industry of any of the burden with which it is faced. Even now, the Board of Trade offers subsidies and grants for re-equipment in manufacturing industries, but only where they are in development areas—or are the grants available elsewhere?

Mr. Darling: indicated assent.

Mr. Barnett: Yes.

Mr. Silverman: I am greatly relieved to hear this. I assure my right hon. Friend, who has corrected me on this fact, that steps ought to be taken to make this more widely known than it is in Lancashire.
Another of the things which is said to me is that, because it is not a development area, it is deprived of the benefit of these grants. If my right hon. Friend is saying—if it is so, I hope that he will take steps to make the facts more widely known that they are—that the grants are available to firms which want to re-equip, whether they are in a development area or not, this will do something to relieve anxiety, certainly in my constituency and throughout North-East Lancashire.
I do not want to add anything more than this. Enough has been said in this debate to show that there is wide anxiety, and justified anxiety, about what could be the beginning of a new economic paralysis in the cotton industry. This is what people fear. This is what is alarming them. This is what is making the rate at which mills close accelerate—because confidence is oozing away. If the Government can do anything to restore that confidence, they ought to do it quickly.
My right hon. Friend the First Secretary, speaking in Blackpool very shortly before the General Election, said that a Labour Government would treat the prob-

lems of the cotton trade as a first priority. I am inviting my right hon. Friends to redeem that pledge. I do not think that they will claim to have done it yet. This constituency has been loyal to the Labour Party, it has been loyal to the Labour movement, and it has been loyal to successive Labour Governments over very many very difficult years. I hope it is not out of place to call on this Labour Government at this time to be loyal to this constituency.

9.46 p.m.

Mr. F. Blackburn: The hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden), who breezed in late into the debate and has now breezed out, felt that he should apologise for intervening. Having been born in a Lancashire textile constituency and having represented for many years a famous Cheshire textile constituency, I do not feel that I need to make any apology for entering into this debate.
There has been a note of pessimism in the speeches tonight, even in those which professed a certain measure of optimism. I confess that I take a much gloomier view of the position than did the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Mr. Hall-Davis). I do not underestimate what has been done by those firms in the industry that have managed to survive, nor do I underestimate the problems still facing them.
Let me start with the pleasant part of my speech. I must express appreciation to the Cotton Board for what it has done over the past years and sound a note of welcome to—what is it called?—the Textile Council (for the Man-Made Fibres, Cotton and Silk Industries of Great Britain). Perhaps it was advisable that the Cotton Board should be extended in order to include these other matters.
By doing this, however, we have not by any means solved the problem of the industry. The functions which the Textile Council is to have are splendid—functions such as methods of production, management and labour utilisation, training and recruitment of employees, safety, industrial diseases, accounting and costing practices, collection of statistics, scientific research undertaking measures for the improvement of design, marketing research, promoting the development of


the export trade. These are all wonderful but, as has been said, they do not touch the main problem of the industry.
The main problem of the industry is imports and dumping. Mention has been made of dumping, and I shall refer to it myself in a moment. The industry is having to struggle. In spite of the structural, financial and technical changes that have taken place in the industry, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale, the industry is still struggling. It used to be said of the industry that in good times people did not invest money in the industry because they thought it was not necessary, and in bad times they could not afford to do so. That is no longer true. The industries which have survived have survived through their own great efforts.
I thought the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson)—he has disappeared at the moment—looked at what happened under the last Conservative Government through rather rosy tinted spectacles, but apart from that, I share his pessimism. This is what one managing director has to say about it:
We have tried to do everything that Mr. Wilson has said will have to be done if Britain is to be 'dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century'.
We have recruited scientists and technologists on a scale considered inappropriate to textile production.
We have invested an average of £600,000 per annum for the past eight years in capital intensive equipment.
We have sent salesmen to sophisticated markets to sell, and a subsidiary does £500,000 in U.S.A. and Canada.
We have gone completely vertical and spinning, weaving, dyeing, bleaching, finishing and garment making.
We have acquired other units to reach the scale associated with maximum production economies and marketing strength.
Yet in spite of having done all that, they are faced at the present time with difficulties, and the reduction in sales over the past five months has been 26 per cent. down on the previous five months. He does not blame everything on the Prices and Incomes policy or the Selective Employment Tax—and it is good to have a letter that does not blame it on those things. He continues to say:
We have had this superimposed on a textile dumping situation of the most barefaced proportions.

The hon. Member for Gillingham asked how do we judge? What evidence was there of dumping? Let me give him some. The letter continues:
We have today had offered a dress fabric f.o.b. Hamburg at 17·5d. per yard. Our manufacturing cost is 29·75d. per yard. Portuguese sheeting is landing at 39d. per yard, and our cost is 48d. per yard. The above 48d. is manufactured in an automated spinning mill, woven on sulzer shuttleless looms and finished in a continuous automated bleachery.
He continues:
Furthermore, you cannot find any cheap textiles in either Germany or Portugal.
I took this matter up with my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, who always tries to be very helpful. It is a pleasure to write to him. This is what he had to say in his reply:
As you know, the Customs Duties (Dumping and Subsidies) Act, 1957, empowers the Board of Trade to impose anti-dumping countervailing duties on goods which have been dumped or subsidised, if they are satisfied that these are causing or threatening material injury to an industry in this country and consider that such action would be in the national interest.…. I should emphasise that the question of material injury must be considered in relation to an 'industry' as a whole.…
The question of dumping could refer in that case only to sheeting and dress fabrics.
…and we have therefore to decide what production or range of production can be considered as constituting an industry within the meaning of the Act. Whether the production of the two different types of textiles mentioned by your constituents can each be separately described as an 'industry' cannot be decided without further information, and I suggest that the firm should have an exploratory meeting with the officials concerned here, when the requirements of the Act can be explained to them and they can be advised how best to proceed with the formulation of an application in concert with any other producers affected.
I brought this letter to the attention of my constituent, and this is what he said:
Dealing first with the Portuguese sheeting imports, a trade delegation has visited the Board of Trade and was advised that if we cannot manufacture sheeting in the U.K. at Portuguese prices it would clearly be advisable for us to cease making sheeting! My company has £1,150,000 invested in automated plant for the through manufacturing of sheetings.
My constituent says that what has happened with regard to sheeting has happened already with other sections of the industry. Of course, since sheeting


does not represent a whole industry any more than drill and overall section did, or any more than candlewick base fabric, pillow cottons, cambric and so on represented the whole industry, so, bit by bit, the industry is being eroded until it will be left with—what was it the hon. Member for Gillingham said?—the "best" part of the trade, the selected part of the trade.
The industry cannot survive attacks of this kind. We cannot persuade the Board of Trade under this Government any more than we could under the Conservative Government to appreciate the real problems. It is no good saying that we have made arrangements for the limitation of imports from Hong Kong, India and Pakistan if at the same time we let in floods of imports from every other country which wants to send them in. Yet this is what has been happening.
Something must be done about dumping. Obviously, sheeting is not the whole of an industry. I wish that we could have from the Board of Trade a little more enthusiastic co-operation. It is said that there has not been a great deal of unemployment in the textile industry recently. This is true, but one of the reasons why there has not over the years been heavy unemployment is that so many people have left the area, and, on top of that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) said, the women and some of the part-time workers have left the industry and are not counted among the unemployed.
In this industry we have carried a good deal of the burdens for the rest of the country. I believe, and I am sure that my colleagues agree, that we deserve something better than we have had up to now. We deserved more support from the last Conservative Government and did not get it. We deserve it and should have it from this Government.
It is up to the Government to build something more on top of the Order. The Order is very useful for an industry which is expanding, and it has some value, of course, for an industry which is fighting for its life, but, as I said before, it does not deal with the fundamental problem. There is no hope until the Government realise what the industry's fundamental problem is.

9.59 p.m.

Mr. Charles Mapp: This debate got off the ground after the contribution with the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson), and the longer it goes on the more the Government get the stick. I shall continue in the same critical tone which began on that side of the House and is now building up to greater heat on this side.
I regret that the Minister is not here as I want to tell him quite frankly that it would seem that the Order has been the subject of consultation all across the industry—employer, employee, the Cotton Board—but Members on this side of the House had no consultation and are here presented with a fait accompli. I would have thought that in this day and age at least the Members concerned on the Government side might have had a little consultation on important matters of this kind. I believe that a principle is involved here, and I therefore enter that protest. I would like to feel that this might be corrected when future matters of textile interest are concerned.
We have had a general but necessarily reserved welcome for the wider coverage of the Textile Council. In the main, I think that that would be right. I consider that the wider coverage is the result of events that have not been engineered by Governments. It would be wrong for the present Government, the last Government, or the one before to assume that this is something constructive which they have initiated. It is nothing of the kind. It is merely the development of industry, which could have serious reactions in other spheres. The author of the 1947 Act was my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. I suppose that he can be proud of some of the comments, particularly of the hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke), who spoke of the consequences of the original thinking in that Act. But, having acknowledged that, I fear that there is some 1947 thinking in the Board of Trade at present.
It is no good relying on past initiatives which were extremely good in themselves. The Cotton Board has had 20 years' experience in which it has grown up to considerable responsibility, but it now has certain limitations and we should recognise those limitations within the new Council we are putting together.
May I now refer to some of them. The hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) mentioned the merchant people. I have equal reservations about the inherent difficulties of having had on the Cotton Board in the past the converters and the merchant people involved in the end product of Lancashire, or the end product as it comes in from outside the country. They manipulate the market, financially and otherwise, to the disadvantage of Lancashire, and Lancashire should put its house in order.
It should make sure that the Minister will ensure that on the council are people who are intrinsically interested in the production of the final cotton or manmade fibre article. They should be people who are physically interested and not purely interested as merchants of the City of London or some other city. In the main, those people have not done much of advantage to the textile industry.
I come now to what I consider to be the main weakness of the proposal. Schedule 2, paragraph (9) says that a function of the Textile Council is
Advising on any matters relating to the industry (other than remuneration or conditions of employment)"—
The hon Member for Clitheroe objected to that exception, but I do not. It goes on:
…as to which the Board of Trade may request the Council to advise and undertaking inquiry for the purpose of enabling the Council so to advise.
This is nearly paralysis.
Two years ago, and more recently, we on this side of the House went to the country on what I believed at the time to be an honest statement—that we wanted and regarded as essential an import board for the industry. I accept that this may have been overtaken by events, but if my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will read the privileged brief the Cotton Board has sent him he will see that the industry is asking for a committee of high standing, comprising representatives of the industry and independents, who can look at the flowing situation month by month in order to deal with abnormal imports where dumping and so on is involved.
It is all very well for the hon. Member for Gillingham to smile, but Lancashire sometimes looks over the wall and asks

why, with its long and cherished history, it does not have the protection for the cotton industry that other industries such as the motor industry and many others have. They get great slices of protection. Lancashire is not asking for that. It is asking for a square deal.

Mr. Burden: I smiled because the word "dumping" has been hurled across the House so often. But I have never yet heard a definition of it. If only hon. Members would try and define what is meant by dumping and what is involved.

Mr. Mapp: I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says, but if he looks at The Times of a few days ago, he will find that cotton operatives in Portugal are getting 12s. 6d. a day. Lancashire is not in any way perturbed by competition from the sophisticated countries of Western Europe.

Mr. Blackburn: Surely dumping is when a country is selling abroad at lower prices than at home—which is what has happened with regard to sheeting from Portugal.

Mr. Mapp: I agree with my hon. Friend and I am grateful to him. There was a case with respect to Canada only a few months ago and some time before that, to a more limited extent, there was a case involving Eire. There is a profound need not for the Board of Trade to take a retrospective view, but for a committee of high standing to look at the current situation regularly.
The House must read the history of our times. One might think that the verticalisation that has taken place is all to the good. But how has it come about? By the actions of the Government—this Government or their predecessors? It has not come about through governmental action at all, but because the man-made fibre section found mergers a wise course to follow financially. I am not misreading the signs. There have been some advantages to Lancashire through the fortuitous consequences of financial operations and the industry is all the better for them.
But I say frankly to my right hon. Friend—and if we were being asked to support a prayer against the Order tonight I could support it for valid reasons —that the months, perhaps the weeks, are


running out for Lancashire and that it expects genuine concerted action about its immediate future. If it is not forthcoming, there will be difficulties on this side of the House.
The most important thing I have to say is that, if we do introduce short-term remedies, which are overdue, it is surely the duty of the Government to give leadership to the new Textile Council. The Cotton Board is rightly commenting on its external relationships with the Government and internationally about imports and the Kennedy Round, and it is being critical. The Cotton Board—and I am sure that this will also be the case with the new Council—wants to cover the nation's needs, but it does not know what the Government are thinking. The Government should set that right in the next few days and tell the Cotton Board, "Let us know your long-term thoughts about the industry generally, its external relations and the organisational and financial set-up so that we may be able to assist the industry to become viable".
Perhaps this will set at ease some of the anxieties the hon. Member for Gillingham has, for he would find that it is just as profitable—and the articles are probably much better—to buy homemade or manufactured articles than to go across the sea for purely entrepreneur purposes.

10.12 p.m.

Mr. Eric Ogden: Every Lancastrian has a certain amount of cotton in his veins and I make no apology for intervening in the debate, particularly when the arguments put forward by hon. Members from the cotton belt are also supported by local organisations such as the Lancashire and Cheshire Industrial Development Association. Some hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) and Oldham, East (Mr. Mapp) will be defending the Government's actions and trying to explain them when we meet outside organisations next Friday and on future dates.
Lancashire has received its raw materials, and, I hope, will continue to receive them, through the Port of Liverpool. We are bound up with the prosperity of the Lancashire cotton industry. My hon. Friend the Member for

Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) suggested that an extension of the development areas would help the cotton industry in his constituency and in other areas. My information is that it would not. It would certainly attract new industries to these areas, but the cotton industry has carried out most of its re-equipment and if it is placed in a development area the industry would be fairly low on the list of priorities.
The hon. Gentleman the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) suggested that the only future for Lancashire lay in high-quality and fashion goods. Certainly, there is an expanding future there, but the case can be made out that this country needs a viable horizontal cotton industry, just as it needs a good agricultural industry or any other type of industry. We need a broad base to carry this high-quality stuff.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of State may feel that he has been rather harshly treated by some of his hon. Friends tonight. If this is so it is because the need is great and we hope that when he replies he will give us some more encouragement. On a personal note, may I say that the whole House will sympathise with my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Dan Jones), who lives in a cotton area, and represents the cotton industry, knows it vertically, horizontally, inside and backwards, but who, because he is a Parliamentary Private Secretary, has to keep quiet. I would like to put that on the record in case he gets into any difficulties in his constituency. No doubt, having the ear of a Minister, he has been "in" on this Order.
In conclusion, I would support these proposals and urge the House to accept them.

10.15 p.m.

The Minister of State to the Board of Trade (Mr. George Darling): My hon. Friend the Member for Westhoughton (Mr. J. T. Price) said that he did not expect the debate upon this Order to be non-controversial. I certainly did not expect it to be so, particularly when I saw hon. Members representing Lancashire constituencies coming in, on both sides of the House, to give me what I am sure they think is the pasting that the Board of Trade deserves. May I take up


first of all the point raised by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Mr. Hall-Davis) and other hon. Members about the absence of my right hon. Friend. He is at a rather important meeting tonight, dealing with export promotion. I am sure that hon. Members, on reading today's trade figures, will forgive him for paying attention tonight to the export drive.
Let me assure hon. Members that we are not complacent about the Lancashire cotton industry. I would point out that we are now dealing with a wider industry, but that does not suggest that the problems of the cotton industry are any the less important. Having been born and brought up in Cheshire, worked in Manchester and now representing a West Riding constituency, I think that hon. Members will agree that I am at least in touch with the textile industries of the North of England.
I will deal almost entirely with the cotton industry and not with the possibilities for the wider textile industries. When I was talking about a growing industry it was with reference to the possible further developments coming from the chemical industries in connection with the development of man-made fibres. There are opportunities here of great scope for future expansion. The debate tonight has been very much about the Lancashire cotton industry and I will confine myself to that subject.
The first point raised concerned dumping of imports into this country. Hon. Members will agree that, with the international obligations, which are not placed upon us alone, but upon all the other countries in the Western world, with whom we trade, to try to take any kind of unilateral action, not just on dumping but on import arrangements of one kind or another, is extremely difficult. Dumping is a special matter. We have authority under international obligations to deal with it.
The hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) summed up the views of many hon. Members when he said that the Board of Trade should abandon its passive attitude to dumping and secret subsidies. He went on to say that under the present arrangements, the Board of Trade asks for evidence before it will do anything. He added

that the Board of Trade ought to be helping in a far more practical and perhaps speedier fashion to find the evidence.
I do not know what went on in the past, but I can assure hon. Members that we do want the Board of Trade to help find the evidence when we are informed of anything that looks like dumping or secret subsidies. My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) raised a point about this, and that was why I said that his constituent should get in touch with the Board of Trade officials quickly, so that we could get down to finding the evidence. In parenthesis, I would say that I was very surprised to hear of the views attributed to Board of Trade officials and I would like to have a word with my hon. Friend so that I can take the matter further.

Mr. Burden: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves that point—

Mr. Darling: I am not leaving it, I can assure him. I would be in trouble if I tried to leave dumping at that point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East (Mr. Mapp) referred to the representations which we will receive from the Cotton Board. He has an advance copy, which gives him the advantage, as I have not seen it yet. We shall look carefully at the Cotton Board's representations and will examine again the way in which this anti-dumping legislation operates, to see what improvements can be made. We will not delay, as soon as we receive the representations——

Mr. Burden: Surely, in assessing dumping, we cannot take into consideration the fact that wages might be lower in another country and that there might be fewer restrictive practices. If so, all the wages and restrictive practices throughout the whole of the liberalised trade area would have to conform and wages in it would have to rise at the same time.

Mr. Darling: Some of my hon. Friends have already suggested that a definition of dumping is very clear. The hon. and learned Member for Darwen will probably explain to his hon. Friend that dumping can be measured and can be found where an industry is selling in this country below the cost of production at home. We can look carefully at any allegations of dumping, but we must obviously have the evidence before we can act——

Mr. Peter Mahon: Is not the most salutary aspect of dumping the fact that coming into this country are the cheapest possible kind of goods, the most inferior, which do not stand comparison with the production in Lancashire? This is what gives our people most pain.

Mr. Darling: That has been brought out clearly in the debate.
The question of closures has been raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. Sydney Silverman) expressed this clearly and moderately when he said that, until the middle of this year, they seemed to be going well. Almost certainly, the closures up to the last few months were the results of amalgamations, mergers, modernisation and so on, all of which, of course, will make the industry far better based than ever before. It was rightly becoming—I hope that this is only a temporary halt—a capital-intensive industry.
One would, therefore, expect to see the reduction in employment as the new labour-saving machines come in. My hon. Friend and others were right to point out that, over the years, this process has gone on with the full co-operation of the trade unions. Particularly in the light of the debate, I think that trade unions in the industry deserve a tribute for the way they have accepted modernisation schemes, mergers, closures of mills and the rest to make the industry prosperous for those who will remain—knowing very well that, in the process, thousands of cotton workers will lose their jobs. This almost technical revolution in the industry has gone on remarkably smoothly.
We now come to the downturn. The hon. Member for Clitheroe (Sir Frank Pearson) gave us three reasons why the downturn had come. The first was the downturn in the world textile cycle, which was bound to affect many, if not all, of the major Western textile manufacturing countries next was the contraction in the home economy which we know has come about because of Government Measures to get the economy and the balance of payments straight. He then went on to refer to the excessive—I think that he would use that word—imports into this country.
I would not quarrel with any of his reasons. We have been in touch with the Cotton Board to see how it assesses the closures. There is some confusion about the number of closures which actually are closures—as distinct from temporary stoppages—which have happened in the last few months. This is something which we want to consider very carefully. I should think, from the Press reports I have seen, that at any rate some of the closures are not really closures but temporary shutdowns, short-time working and the rest. I hope that the measures which must be taken at some point—what point I cannot say—for reflation will have their effect on the cotton industry, as on others, and that this downturn will be only temporary——

Mr. Hall-Davis: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman is looking into this with the Cotton Board. From my own experience, which is borne out by hon. Gentlemen opposite, there are permanent closures and it is this aspect which is causing so much concern.

Mr. Darling: There are many permanent closures, I agree, but to what extent they were due to the reasons which the hon. Member for Clitheroe gave or are still the result of modernisation and mergers, we still do not know. I cannot answer the hon. Member's question about the total, but we are trying to get a clear picture from the Cotton Board——

Sir F. Pearson: Would the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that he will look particularly into the case of modernised mills, which are having to turn down or close down parts of their production? This is what is so worrying.

Mr. Darling: The hon. Gentleman interrupted me just as I was about to say that. I was disturbed that he should say that some of the mills which will be permanently closed have been modernised to some extent during the last few years. We will look into that with the Board.
The hon. Member also asked me whether the Textile Council would be able to keep an eye on and give occasional advice on imports. Of course, the council, although it is not completely spelled out in the functions in the Order, will be able to do precisely that.
Then the hon. Member for Clitheroe asked about categorisation. I wish that


we could find a better word, but we all know what it means. Categorisation was extended under the global scheme of imports, and whether we can succeed, by extending categorisation, to deal with the import problems which he raised remains to be seen. This is something which we shall look at.
Questions were asked by several hon. Members about Function 9. The form of words used here was used in the previous Order; it is taken from the principal Act. The intention was, presumably, to leave the negotiation of wages to the trade unions and employers. But the Textile Council will remain the mouthpiece of the industry and will be free to make whatever representations it likes on any subject, including the profitability point.
My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Royton (Mr. Barnett) brought the discussion about dumping down to two specific issues: Portugal, a member of E.F.T.A., and Austria, a member of E.F.T.A. I assure him that we shall take note of the views which he expressed about coming to a different arrangement with Portugal. But, because Portugal is a member of E.F.T.A., the arrangements must be made voluntarily between us.
The view expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, East on the Imports Commission was correct. The idea of an Imports Commission has been overtaken by events, because the Board of Trade has power to carry out all the duties which would have been given to an Imports Commission. Hon. Members, clearly, are not satisfied with what the Board of Trade has been able to do in acting as an Imports Commission, but it will be conceded—in fact, several hon. Members did concede it—that the global quota system is a step in the right direction. My hon. Friends asked that further steps should be quickly taken in the same direction.

Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: The right hon. Gentleman said that the Board of Trade now has all the power which an Imports Commission would have had. From where did the power exclusively to buy all cotton imports come? That is what the Imports Commission was to do.

Mr. Darling: That is perfectly true. I was referring to the duties of an Imports Commission in relation to the discussions on dumping and import quota arrangements which must be made under the Kennedy Round. I was not going further into the proposals for purchasing. I was dealing entirely with dumping and the imports problem.

Mr. Barnett: Perhaps my right hon. Friend would recollect some of the things said by some of his right hon. Friends. For instance, in the debate in August, 1962, his right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mrs. Castle) referred to a valid point, which is as valid now as it was then, namely, about getting a more even distribution of the imports as a ground for having an Imports Commission.

Mr. Darling: I must look at the debate again.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne asked about development grants. I shall come to the development area question in a moment.
It is proposed that in certain industries firms not in development areas will get a grant of 25 per cent. in respect of expenditure incurred after 1st January next year. Those firms in development areas will get a grant of 45 per cent. This raises the issues touched on by many hon. Members including the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale, who wanted to know why, in view of the running down of the industry, we cannot make places in Lancashire parts of development areas —in other words, give them development area status. This his been discussed again and again.
I think that it was my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Robert Howarth) who suggested that there should be a shading of status, as it were, that if we had stuck to the 40 and 20 per cent. grants parts of Lancashire, because of the rundown of the industry and the fact that these gaunt mills which are no longer making cotton, should be turned over to some other more profitable use than warehouses, and should have a development grant of about 30 per cent. This is a proposal which we have considered.
We think that the present circumstances and the fact that we still have not conquered the unemployment problems of many parts of the country and that we


have not yet provided redistribution of industry to the places which are in greatest need of it, the present arrangements must stand. But those few Members who were present when we were dealing with the Order defining the development areas will recollect that I said that two problems had arisen during the discussion about the boundaries of the development areas. One is the problem of the grey towns. The other is the problem of what to do with seaside resorts which have too much labour in the winter and not enough in the summer. I said that we should consider both problems. This is the assurance I give to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Sydney Silverman: The difficulty might be largely met if the Ministry of Labour could be persuaded to correct its unemployment figures so as to take some cognisance of the degree of partial unemployment and some cognisance of the unemployment of married women, who do not normally figure in the registered unemployed, but who are definitely employed just the same. If a measure of corrective factor were introduced into the figure to make it more realistic, having regard to the background and the facts, there might be less difficulty in what would otherwise appear to be discrimination as between one part of the country and another.

Mr. Darling: Although I have said unemployment in what were once the distressed areas must be our main consideration—I am sure my hon. Friend would agree that this is our major problem—unemployment alone now is not the sole criterion on which we work. We can take these other factors into consideration. That is why I said that we shall examine the grey areas and the seaside resorts to see what action needs to be taken, because we do not need to depend on the unemployment statistics alone.
If I may venture a personal view, although our guiding line is the per-

centage of unemployment, there are many parts of the country where—forget the percentage figure—we could come to a fairly reasonable assessment of the number of jobs that ought to be available in each of these areas to provide full employment. I think that we can do that. At the moment we must devote our resources, in so far as they are used in the development areas, to the development areas that we have laid down in the Schedule to the Order.

Mr. J. T. Price: We are all grateful to my right hon. Friend for having put up a pretty good defence from a very weak brief. He is on a very sticky wicket. I want to ask him one final question before he departs from the scene. If the Board of Trade is as forward-looking and as rational as he says it is, why is Great Britain the only advanced industrial country in Europe which is constantly flooded with imports of textiles from every part of the world. The experience we are complaining about has not been matched in any other European country.

Mr. Darling: I have a note of the point my hon. Friend has raised. I can assure him that I have not got a brief here. I have written this myself. I agree entirely with him and with others who have raised this question. The real problem here is that we are taking from the developing countries—every developing country seems to start up by setting up a textile industry—a higher proportion of their output than any other Western nation. It is about time that we got into discussions with those countries to see if they will take their share of the burden. I agree entirely with that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Cotton Industry Development Council (Amendment No. 6) Order 1966, a draft of which was laid before this House on 30th November, be approved.

Orders of the Day — ALCOHOL ETHERS (IMPORT DUTIES)

10.39 p.m.

The Minister of State, Board of Trade (Mr. George Darling): I beg to move,
That the Import Duties (General) (No. 9) Order 1966 (S.I., 1966, No. 1472), dated 23rd November 1966, a copy of which was laid before this House on 29th November, be approved.
The purpose of the Order is to impose a protective duty of 20 per cent. ad valorem, which is the full rate, on certain alcohol ethers.
I should explain, to begin with, that no duty will be chargeable on imports of these alcohol ethers from countries in the Commonwealth preference area or in E.F.T.A. The Order follows, and is related to, the earlier Order which the House approved by affirmative Resolution in June of last year. This earlier Order imposed a 20 per cent. duty on certain fatty alcohols used mainly for the manufacture of what are called, I regret to say, highly biodegradable detergents. I think that they could have been given a simpler name.
These detergents are the kind whose foam or lather quickly disappears when discharged into rivers or sewerage works, and the present Order extends the same level of protection to alcohol ethers which are derived from those fatty alcohols I have mentioned. The ethers are mainly used for making liquid biodegradable detergents. The terms I have used could, perhaps, be faulted by expert chemists, but they will give hon. Members a true picture of what is involved here.
Hon. Members who were present at the debate on 28th June last year will recall that the duty was raised on the alcohols concerned for a variety of reasons. The most important was that the demand for highly biodegradable detergents which would not pollute our water supplies was expanding and that it was in the national interest to encourage that expansion, but that expansion brought some difficulties to our domestic producers, who had to pay substantially

higher duties on their raw materials than their foreign competitors, so that their costs were unavoidably higher.
At the same time, price competition was unusually severe, and the imported goods were offered, in many cases, at prices that could not be equalled without cutting the margin of home production below an economic level.
Moreover, the main producer in Britain was, or is, located in a development area. I do not know whether this Order is to be opposed——

Mr. Iain Macleod: Does not the Minister of State realise that the next business is a Prayer, and that this is the last night for it, and that it cannot be postponed? Will he therefore please show some consideration for the House instead of reading out this interminable brief?

Mr. Darling: It is essential, when putting on an ad valorem duty of this size, to explain it to the House. I was just about to say that if no one intends to oppose the Motion I think that the explanation I have given will suffice. I want to help the right hon. Gentleman as much as I can.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Import Duties (General) (No. 9) Order 1966 (S.I., 1966, No. 1472), dated 23rd November 1966, a copy of which was laid before this House on 29th November, be approved.

Orders of the Day — CRIMINAL JUSTICE [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the law relating to the proceedings of criminal courts, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament—

(a) of any increase attributable to the provisions of that Act in the sums payable out of moneys so provided under any other enactment;
(b) of any sums required by the Secretary of State for making payments in connection with legal aid under any of those provisions.

Resolution agreed to.

Orders of the Day — PAY INCREASES (NEWSPAPER INDUSTRY)

10.48 p.m.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Temporary Restrictions on Pay Increases (20th July 1966 Levels) (No. 2) Order 1966 (S.I., 1966, No. 1380), dated 4th November 1966, a copy of which WAS laid before this House on 4th November, be annulled.
I must take a few minutes of the time left to protest at the way the Government have conducted business today. This is the last day on which it is possible to move this Prayer, it cannot be postponed, and the debate has to stop at 11.30. In so far as business was in the control of the Opposition, we gave the Government, exactly on schedule, the Third Reading of the London Government Bill at 7 o'clock, even though many hon. Members on this side still wanted to speak. As compensation for that, they have put down three affirmative Resolutions, have talked on them at interminable length, and have made quite certain that this Motion does not get the attention tonight that it deserves.
I spoke to the Leader of the House across the Floor of the House and asked that Prayers which relate to Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act should be taken as first Order of the Day, at 3.30 p.m. He was sympathetic at the time, although he has felt himself unable to meet this request. I would say, in his absence—no doubt, he will take the opportunity of reading it—and in my mildest manner, that if the Opposition, on matters like this, are to be treated with such discourtesy, we will take our own methods, which are open to an Opposition to ensure that these matters are properly discussed.
I turn from that, because of the short age of time, to outline the story which lies behind this Order. I am glad that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Labour is to reply to the debate. I spent a large part of the summer complaining that the Ministry of Labour was doing things that it ought not to do and not doing things which it ought to do. Because the Ministry and the Minister have had such an important part to play in this, it is right that the Parliamentary

Secretary, whom we very much welcome to the debate, should reply.
I will give the story, as I understand it, as quickly as I can. The Order affects the pay of 25,000 national newspaper workers and about 4,500 distribution workers in London and the provinces, or, in round figures, about 30,000 people. The agreement was made in the early months of 1964, to run to September, 1967, and, as the Parliamentary Secretary will agree, an agreement which runs for 3½ years is very much welcomed by the Ministry of Labour because it imports an element of stability—if the agreement is kept, anyway—into the wage negotiations for that industry.
There were two parts to the agreement, first, that the basic pay should go up by 10 per cent., which it did on 1st April, 1964, and second, that there should be cost-of-living quarterly increases based on movements of the Retail Prices Index. I will not bother the House with the calculations, but the net result was that a bonus of 2s. 0d. per week became payable to most workers—I think it was 6s. 0d. to some—from 1st September, 1966. What we are considering, therefore, is a normal cost-of-living bargain. In all, there are, perhaps, something like 2½ million workers whose wages are linked either directly or, as in this case, for a subsidiary part of their income, to the Retail Prices Index, popularly called the cost of living.
It is perfectly true that the Prices and Incomes Board, in August, 1965, looking at this and allied problems, recommended that such agreements should be abandoned, but the wishes of Mr. Aubrey Jones are not the law of the land any more than are the wishes of Ministers, a point to which I shall return later.
To resume my account of events, the Minister of Labour, on 23rd August, said that this agreement, sealed, signed and, beyond argument, enforceable in the courts, was inappropriate, even though a clear contractual obligation existed, and he invited the unions to meet him to discuss the matter. The unions refused to meet the Minister of Labour, and I am bound to say that I sympathise with the unions. Things have come to a pretty pass when unions in this country, should be summoned to St. James's Square to have it explained to them why a properly negotiated wage agreement would be


broken. The unions declined to take part in any such charade. The Newspaper Proprietors' Association and the unions concerned suggested they should pay the amount which would arise from this bonus into a special fund which could be used for charitable or for training purposes.
I should have thought this to be a convenient way out. The Minister of Labour, as I understand it, almost incredibly, rejected this as being against the spirit of the standstill. Finally, under pressure from the unions, and, no doubt, with the case in mind which was decided in the Edmonton County Court, the N.P.A., on 30th September, agreed to pay, and at the same time, it issued a statement accusing the Government of failing to implement Part IV to protect the employers.
Normally, almost any accusation against this Government has my warm and partisan support, but I greet this particular comment with a good deal of cynicism, first, because more than one of the newspaper proprietors concerned had been pressing very hard in their own papers for the implementation of Part IV and, secondly, because I am sure they found it extremely convenient not to have to pay the wages which they had contracted to pay at an earlier date.
The Newspaper proprietors found it convenient to pull this lever themselves, and the Government, obediently enough, danced to their tune. In due course, after what I can only regard as a farce of consultation and considering representations, the Government made the Order, which came into force on 4th November. The employees were, in effect, pinned to the level of wages as at 20th July this year, the date of the Prime Minister's statement.
It is worth noting that two house agreements with the London Evening News have been exempted from the Minister of Labour's fiat, or, rather, the First Secretary of State's fiat, and exempted for a rather curious reason. They were exempted because they were introduced in good faith, and the N.P.A. was told on the telephone, shortly after 20th July, that the increases would qualify for exemption on the ground that they raised output.
I do not doubt that this extremely sensible civil servant of the D.E.A. has been suitably reprimanded, because everyone knows that it is not the Government's intention to raise output, and he was probably wrong in giving that undertaking. But, be that as it may, these two agreements, and these two alone, escape what the Parliamentary Secretary will, no doubt, in due course recommend.
I think that that is an accurate account of the history. We must be quite clear as a House of Commons that this is a story of a breach of faith forced by this Government. We are not considering tonight the whole of Government policy. We are not considering even the 6 million workers who are alleged to have had some hope of future reward when the chopper came down on 20th July. We are considering, in respect of 30,000 workers, whether a legally enforceable agreement entered into before 20th July should be met, or whether we should authorise employers to break their word and breach their agreements. This is the issue.
In my view, it is immaterial whether the number of workers affected is 30,000, as it is here, whether it is 120, as it was last week when we considered the Order made in respect of the Thorn Electrical supervisors and A.S.S.E.T., or even whether it is a single man—if the First Secretary of State ever does anything like this—whose remuneration the right hon. Gentleman, for reasons which seem good to him, wishes to hold back. If it be a breach of faith, it is not an answer that either a small or a large number of people are involved. The House must make up its mind whether this is or is not a breach of faith. The evidence seems to me o be overwhelming that, in fact, it is.
The answer always beloved of the Ministries concerned is that, if one lets this one through the net, there will be repercussions. Ministers ought never to accept this argument provided that they are satisfied that it would be right in any given instance to accede to the request put before them.
In short, my case is that agreements should be kept, and I still find it incredible that it should be the Ministry of Labour, of all Ministeries, which is leading the hunt to break that sort of agreement. It is often said that there


are differences between the present standstill and the pause of, say, 1961 or 1962. But during that pause, or indeed any other during the 13 years of our power, we never broke agreements, and we never encouraged people to break agreements. That is one of the major distinctions between the exercise in pause or standstill which I recognise that all Governments may well have to indulge in from time to time and the one before the House in this particular form at the moment, which is a deliberate encouragement to a breach of faith.
There is a widespread illusion, referred to by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) in the debate on the Thorn Order a week ago, that in some curious way the Government have instituted a legal freeze upon incomes. Of course, that is not true. The position is that it is perfectly legal to raise any salary, any wage, any dividend, any price. The risk is that the First Secretary in his wisdom, or lack of it, may then chastise one with an Order. It is then the right of the Opposition, which as we can see from the passage of time can be almost taken away from them, to use their Parliamentary methods to protest against it.
I have been asked many times these past weeks what people should do in a particular instance. Sometimes it is the case of one man who may have an agreement about Christmas bonuses, sometimes it is a much more important matter. I have always given the same answer, "Act as a good employer". Before tonight, I would have thought that that doctrine was incontestable on either side of the House. It is a fantastic state of affairs that the Ministry of Labour, again, of all Ministries, should be mobilised to contest that proposition.
The standard explanation for an Order like this is that it is in some way fair that people should be blackguarded for asking for their legal rights. The Government's position is that it is fair that legal agreements should be broken. I very much hope that the House would reject not only the Order, but the thinking that lies behind that proposition, because the Government seem to me to be both quixotic and irrational in this. Some agreements escape the net and

others—this, the Thorn agreement, the blast furnacemen, and those on the Order Paper—do not. Why should we single them out when agreements, for example, made by the Morgan Crucible firm, Acrow and others have—in my view absolutely rightly—escaped with, at the most, a word of reprimand.
It seems to me very strange that the Ministry of Labour should do even that, because it is a very odd state of affairs when the Minister of Labour stumps up and down the country urging people not to pay higher wages for higher productivity. That is the inevitable result of Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act, and the subsequent Orders that are before the House.
Therefore, I ask the Parliamentary Secretary: why do the Government always attack only agreements made by the unions? Why should not agreements made by others than union members be affected by the Government's policy, unless of course—and this may be so—the deliberate encouragement of non-unionism is now a new item of the Government's policy?
The whole range of salary earners is left untouched by the legislation and by the Orders which we have been considering and that which we are considering. Where the labour force is under 200 people the Minister of Labour is not interested. Indeed, provided those concerned neither go to law nor make a public fuss about it, the odds are that the Ministry of Labour and the First Secretary will never hear about it. I do not doubt that thousands of such agreements are being made and many of them, on my good employer thesis, properly so.
Tonight we must decide the particular case, not the general. What we have to decide is whether we as a House of Commons, should throw our shield over some of the wealthiest owners and proprietors in the country and allow them, indeed order them, to break their word. This seems to be a very odd piece of Socialism, and is a very bad piece of legislation. I hope that the House will reject it.

11.0 p.m.

Mr. J. J. Mendelson: I want to put two points to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary before she


replies. I have followed this matter with care and looked at some of the papers involved, and I find that one of the most difficult items in the sequence of events is the kind of discussions which went on during one of the meetings which were attended by the representatives of the unions, the employers and the Minister.
Apparently, and my hon. Friend will correct me if I am wrong, although I think that my source is quite accurate, at some time during the discussion a majority of employers—they were not unanimous, and to that extent I do not accept the facts as stated by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, West (Mr. McLeod) —were in favour of either paying the cost of living payment or setting up a special fund. They were told that they could do neither.
This refers back to one of the debates that we had late at night in the House, when I asked my right hon. Friend, the then Minister of State for Economic Affairs, why it was not possible, in the case of the railwaymen who had their 3½ per cent. increase stopped, or in the case of other groups of workpeople, to say that the Government could not allow the money to be paid now in consideration of the policy that they were pursuing, but that they would see to it that from the appropriate day, those sums, very important to the people concerned, would be paid into a special fund and at some time would be released to them.
I made the point then, and I repeat it now, that it seemed to some of us to be a very grave injustice that there should be the posssibility of other people, not in a similar position as these workpeople, enjoying increases during the period of standstill, while, for these workpeople, the money was lost for ever. This is particularly important, bearing in mind the previous experiences of unemployment and short-time working that these people have had. How can my right hon. Friend the Minister, and the Government defend what is happening now in view of the fact that the Government have declared that nothing can be done about dividends?
In passing, I would say that any reference to dividends was a notable absentee from the detailed and comprehensive speech of the right hon. Gentleman. [Interruption.] Hon. Members must bear with me. I do not want to speak too long.

There was a deafening silence from the right hon. Gentleman when he failed to make any reference to dividends. He made other comparisons, but dividends are the most important of all, because, at the present time, the Government say that they cannot control them. The Opposition support that. They do not want dividends touched.

Mr. F. A. Burden: On a point of order. Is it not quite wrong to refer to dividends when the Order makes no mention of them?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: (Sir Eric Fletcher): I do not think that, so far, the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) is out of order.

Mr. Mendelson: I intend to return to my main point, but I was saying, in passing, that there was a notable absence of reference to dividends in the right hon. Gentleman's speech, and this shows the hollowness of the Opposition's case.
They have no right to talk about this at all. They must come with clean hands if they want to join this argument. The point about dividends is relevant, because, if the Government say officially that they cannot control them, obviously people receiving dividend increases will be able to get away with it. But this is not where the story ends.
We know that there are certain salary groups which have annual increments. If I had stayed in my previous profession —I know that some hon. Members may wish me to return to it—I would have benefited by these arrangements. I should have had annual increments. It is noticeable that this argument was also absent from the right hon. Gentleman's catalogue. Considerable numbers of people are involved. They will have their increments paid to them, but the railwaymen, or the printers, involved in this Order, will not get their modest increases. The money lost will be gone forever and there will be no redress.
My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary should have the longest possible time to reply to the debate and there is a serious case to be answered. I therefore conclude by saying that I know she will reply that this is Government policy. I do not put this criticism at her door personally. This is a major policy decision of the Government. It has grave


consequences for all those who have to carry it out, but I cannot understand how, in this situation, when that meeting took place at the Ministry, my right hon. Friend could have accepted this advice from the Government and could have given the advice he did to the employers —that in no circumstances must they create a special fund.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary gave me no reply when I put this question to him before. I hope that, tonight, my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will do so, because, as she knows, not only the 30,000 work-people involved in this Order, but the whole of the trade union movement will be interested in her answer.
My hon. Friend must not be persuaded otherwise by the votes taken at the T.U.C. or other conferences. I remind her that all the T.U.C. did was to acquiesce reluctantly in the policy she has to defend tonight. [Interruption.] I am not interested in interventions from Members who have so clearly shown that they are very easily provoked into hostility to the trade union movement on so many occasions. I am addressing my argument not to the Opposition, but to my hon. Friend. The answer which my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary failed to give me on that previous occasion she must give tonight.

11.10 p.m.

Mr. Angus Maude: I hope that it will not be considered too digressive and irrelevant, following the speech of the hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson), if I talk for a moment about the wages of printers and people concerned with newspapers. It is sometimes difficult to remember, when one is talking in general terms about the prices and incomes freeze, that one is dealing, when an Order comes up, with specific people who are affected in specific ways.
I felt emboldened to speak because I have been a journalist of one sort or another for very many years. I started my working life as a young journalist working side by side with printers and compositors. I have in my time been a newspaper editor and employed both journalists and printers. There is no doubt that restrictive practices and the inflationary pressure of printers' wages have been a problem in journalism for

many years. We all know that it is a problem, but it will not be solved by the means which the Government seek to apply.
This has been the case with every one of the Orders which the Government have produced under the Prices and Incomes Act, and it is likely to be so if the number of Orders stretches on to the crack of doom. This is simply not something which the Government can take away from the normal bargaining machinery. It is not something which the Government can remove from employers and trade unions. It is not something which can be dealt with by a blanket nonselective measure of this kind.
However unsatisfactory the results of the bargaining machinery may have been in the specific cases, the Government will only make them worse if they try to intervene in it. We have seen innumerable cases of this kind. We know that there are grave dangers of inflation whenever a wage claim is put forward, whenever employers are forced, by force majeure, to give way to it. But the fact remains that if the Government try to take out of the hands of the two sides to whom the employers, on the one hand, and thousands of trade unionists, on the other, have been content to give the power to bargain, the result will be, in the long run, not merely more inflationary than the situation we had before, but will result in a deteioration of industrial relations and confidence over the whole field.
Take the case with which we are dealing. Newspapers are perhaps one of the industries most at risk from an industrial stoppage, a dispute of any kind, not merely because they depend to an enormous extent on the good will of the public and advertisers, but because, however great may be the divergence of opinion between the two sides, whether it be the proprietors and journalists, or the proprietors and printers, there is underlying all this a basic feeling among proprietors, management, journalists, printers, distributors, drivers—everyone who makes up the complicated business of producing a newspaper—a kind of esprit de corps which survives.
I remember, when I was a very young journalist, working as a sub-editor. It sometimes occurred to me that if a crisis occurred at two o'clock in the morning


and I had to stay until six o'clock in the morning, it was perhaps a bit hard that the compositor or stone-hand who worked beside me was getting heavy overtime for staying until six o'clock while I was getting nothing and he was earning £11 a week and I was getting only £6. Nevertheless, he and I both knew that we were producing a newspaper which was more important than either of us and that we had a duty to the public which we were both, in our own ways, serving.
Whatever may be the divergences, whatever may be the industrial disputes that go on in newspapers, somehow or other they are surmounted, the newspapers go on coming out, and in the end it is better to leave it to the proprietors, the journalists and the printers, than for any National Board for Prices and Incomes, or any Minister, or any economist, or any sociologist, or whatever it may, to think that they know better than those who are engaged in this operation.

Mr. William Price: I speak as a member of the National Union of Journalists, which, I suspect, the hon. Gentleman is not. Would he explain why, if managements are so well able to look after their affairs, so many newspapers are closing down?

Mr. Maude: I find it a little difficult to see the relevance of that question to what we are discussing. If it were to be relevant or in order, it would presumably follow that the hon. Gentleman is trying to show that Government intervention to break an agreement between management and workers, whether professional or manual, in the newspaper industry will somehow keep newspapers alive. The only result which is likely from this is to accelerate the demise of a number of newspapers which are precariously hanging on at the moment.

Mr. William Price: Incompetence.

Mr. Maude: When the hon. Gentleman reads this exchange in HANSARD tomorrow he will find that he is arguing on precisely the wrong end of the argument.
In view of the general problem which the Government have landed themselves with in Part IV of the Act, there is not the slightest doubt that all that they will

do is to pile up for themselves in the future an increasing amount of trouble, and the more Orders that they succeed in forcing through the House in the meantime the greater the trouble they are likely to pile up for themselves in the future.
Taking one by one the sorts of things which the Government might be trying to do in the national interest, one finds inevitably that the results which are likely will be absolutely the reverse of what the Government purport to be doing. For example, what they purport to be doing, presumably, in the first place, is to halt a cost inflation—to halt at least a wage inflation. If the Government really wanted above all other things to halt a wage inflation, to prevent inflation spreading from wages through prices into the cost of living, what they should have done was to select the really inflationary wage increases and try to impose a stop on them.
It cannot conceivably be argued by any stretch of the imagination that the wage increments and increases specified in this Order are inflationary in that sense. We know that they are not. There are some wage increases which spread inevitably and by progression in an inflationary way throughout the whole of the economy. My constituents write to me practically every day about gas increases, electricity increases—numbers of such increases are inflationary, and the results spread throughout the economy. But it cannot be argued that these increases are in the same class. It cannot be argued that it is necessary on any except the most egalitarian, philosophical grounds that because one wants to stop one inflationary increase here one has to stop every non-inflationary increase throughout the economy.
If we really wanted to do this, is this the way to do it? I hope that the hon. Lady will carry out the simple task of telling us precisely what sub-paragraphs (3) and (4) of paragraph 4 of the Order mean. I do not know whether any hon. Member opposite, or any of my hon. Friends, has read those sub-paragraphs with care—if any one of them can lay his hands on his heart and says that he knows what they mean, I shall be very grateful to him. In fact, either of those sub-paragraphs, if presented to any one who is actually involved as an earner


or as a wage or salary payer in these industries, would know without the slightest doubt that the whole thing is nonsense. This provision would not make sense to anyone who had to try to interpret it from the point of view of the ordinary man and woman.
The Government are getting themselves, through the Orders they are bringing forward under the Act, into progressively increasing difficulties, and I hope that they will have the sense to realise that the amount of industrial disaffection, the amount of disagreement, not only between Government and industry but between employers and employees, which will result from all this are becoming increasingly serious. I hope that my hon. Friends will decide to divide against the Order.

11.23 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mrs. Shirley Williams: I notice that the hon. Gentleman the Member for—

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have had insufficient time in which to debate this matter tonight. Is it within your province to permit the House to continue its discussion or another day, so that we can have a proper debate, and a proper reply from the Minister?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am afraid not.

Mrs. Williams: I was anxious to give the fullest amount of time I could to speakers on both sides of the House, but it will be clear that it will be impossible, in the few minutes left, for me to answer all the points that have been raised.
I should like to thank the right hon. Member for Enfield, West (Mr. lain Macleod) for having told me in advance that he would not be raising legal points. I should also like to express a personal apology to the right hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir J. Hobson) who, in an earlier debate of this kind, raised a number of legal points. I am afraid that, in answering one case clearly, as I thought, I used a phrase that meant something different to him, as a lawyer, than it did to me.
First, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Enfield, West referred to the

fact that there had not been sufficient consultation on the particular case that is before the House. Not only was there constant consultation with both sides by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour and my right hon. Friend the First Secretary, but the making of the Order was directly held up by the First Secretary for several days to enable the unions involved to consult their own executive committees.
It has been said by the right hon. Gentleman that there were a great many breaches of the standstill and that it was a very unfair policy. In fact, there has been a very large degree of support for the standstill, voluntary support. If the right hon. Gentleman cares to look at the index of wage rates he will see that they have not moved between July and November, and this is directly due to the considerable degree of loyalty being shown by both sides of industry during this difficult period.
In reply to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson), I would point out that dividends are subject to the freeze of 20th July, and, therefore, it is not correct to say that they are not covered at all. Moreover, one of the effects of either allowing the increase which has now been stopped by the Order, or allowing payment to a charitable fund, would be the creation of substantial inflationary pressure which would vitiate the whole purpose of the standstill.
The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Mr. Maude) referred in a philosophical spirit to the grave dangers of inflation, an approach which I share with him. It is worth pointing out that although the Opposition in this debate, and in the debate on 5th December, have mounted a great case against the Government's prices and incomes policy, they have at no point suggested what they would do in a similar situation. They have not done so in this debate. I have just read the debate on the 5th December and, quite clearly, it was not done on that occasion.
The right hon. Member for Enfield, West has raised all the questions of principle that were discussed in detail at the time of the Prices and Incomes Act and subsequently. On this occasion, perhaps, the best thing to say is that the gravamen


of his case was that there should not be a standstill at all. He did not make out his case in much detail, if at all, given that there was a prices and incomes standstill—I accept that there can be great differences in the House about that—on what action the Government should take regarding the minority who refuse to take any notice of the standstill.
I suggest very strongly, that where we have a situation in which the standstill is being voluntarily kept, as this one is, by the great majority on both sides of industry—my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone is prepared to agree that there was reluctant acquiescence to use his phrase, on the part of the Trades Union Congress in this policy—it would be an impossible state of affairs if this policy could be broken by a handful of either employers or unions, as the case might be.
Part IV of the Bill was fully debated in the House. It has been made quite clear—and I repeat—that Part IV falls on 11th August, 1967. There has been much argument about what should succeed the prices and incomes standstill, but it has been made absolutely clear that Part IV falls on that date.
I shall now deal as quickly as I can with one or two of the other points which were raised. I take, first, the suggestion made by the unions and the N.P.A. that there should be payment into a charitable fund. Such a payment of money, charitable fund though it might be, would be a charge on the industry reflected in its labour costs and, without doubt, if the same policy were followed with the other 6 million workers who had pay increases due to them, the final effect would be a substantial inflationary pressure at the end of the prices and incomes standstill period. For this reason, my right hon. Friend felt obliged to tell both sides, on 5th September, that he could not accept this alternative.
No one who criticises the prices and incomes standstill should do so other than against the background of the situation of this country not just in the last few months, but over many years, a situation which has been marked by inflation. The effects of inflation on those living on fixed incomes, on pensions or on low wages are, without doubt, serious. The industry which we are considering tonight

is, in fact, one of the highest paid in the country, with average weekly earnings of £28 6s. in April, 1966, for adult male workers compared with an average of £20 19s. a week in manufacturing industry.
We are not, therefore, talking of a case in which the Government have brought in an Order against an industry which could argue that it fell under the criteria for the period of severe restraint. Accordingly, I ask the House to reject the Motion.

Mr. R. Gresham Cooke: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have had only a very short debate of three-quarters of an hour on the Prayer. Is there not a procedure whereby you can give a certificate for the debate to be transferred to another day?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am governed by the Standing Orders, and, in particular, by Standing Order No. 100 and Standing Order No. 2. Standing Order No. 100 enables Mr. Speaker to adjourn a Motion of this kind if,
owing to the lateness of the hour at which consideration of the motion was entered upon, or because of the importance of the subject matter of the motion, the time for debate has not been adequate.
There might well be circumstances in which I should feel obliged to exercise my discretion under Standing Order 100, but, on the other hand, I have to consider the effect of Standing Order No. 2, which provides that certain business is exempted business. A Prayer of this kind is exempted business, being a poceeding in pursuance of an Act of Parliament, and the provisions governing the matter enable a Prayer to be put down within 40 praying days.
As today is the last of those days, even if I were to exercise my discretion under Standing Order 100, it would be impossible for the House to debate the matter within the terms of Standing Order No. 2 at any other time. Therefore, I feel that the right course is to put the Question now in order that the House may come to a decision.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I submit to you that Standing Order No. 2 refers to the moving of the Motion and does not exclude a continuance of debate upon


the Motion on a subsequent day consequent upon your exercising your discretion under Standing Order No. 100.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The difficulty is that, as far as I understand the Standing Orders, there is no machinery which would enable this debate to be resumed as exempted business on any subsequent day. The House would, therefore, be

deprived of the right to come to a decision unless I put the question now.

It being half-past Eleven o'clock, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 100 (Statutory Instruments, &amp;c. (Procedure)).

The House divided: Ayes 111, Noes 170.

Division No. 227.]
AYES
 [11.33 p.m.


Alison, Michael (Barkston Ash)
Gower, Raymond
Morrison, Charles (Devizes)


Baker, W. H. K.
Grant-Ferris, R.
Murton, Oscar


Batsford, Brian
Gresham Cooke, R.
Nabarro, Sir Gerald


Biffen, John
Grieve, Percy
Neave, Airey


Black, Sir Cyril
Gurden, Harold
Nott, John


Blaker, Peter
Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Onslow, Cranley


Body, Richard
Harrison, Col. Sir Harwood (Eye)
Osborn, John (Hallam)


Brinton, Sir Tatton
Hastings, Stephen
Page, Graham (Crosby)


Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)
Hawkins, Paul
Pearson, Sir Frank (Clitheroe)


Bruce-Gardyne, J.
Heald, Rt. Hn. Sir Lionel
Percival, Ian


Bryan, Paul
Heseltine, Michael
Pink, R. Bonner


Buchanan-Smith, Alick (Angus, N&amp;M)
Higgins, Terence L.
Powell, Rt. Hn. J. Enoch


Burden, F. A.
Hirst, Geoffrey
Pym, Francis


Carlisle, Mark
Hobson, Rt. Hn. Sir John
Quennell, Miss J. M.


Chichester-Clark, R.
Holland, Philip
Rippon, Rt. Hn. Geoffrey


Clegg, Walter
Hordern, Peter
Roots, William


Cooke, Robert
Hornby, Richard
Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)


Cordle, John
Hunt, John
Russell, Sir Ronald


Costain, A. P.
Jenkin, Patrick (Woodford)
Scott, Nicholas


Crosthwaite-Eyre, Sir Oliver
Johnston, Russell (Inverness)
Shaw, Michael (Sc'b'gh &amp; Whitby)


Davidson, James (Aberdeenshire, W.)
Jopling, Michael
Smith, John


d'Avigdor-Coldsmid, Sir Henry
Kimball, Marcus
Steel, David (Roxburgh)


Dean, Paul (Somerset, N.)
Knight, Mrs. Jill
Stoddart-Scott, Col. Sir M. (Ripon)


Deedes, Rt. Hn. W. F. (Ashford)
Legge-Bourke, Sir Harry
Taylor, Edward M.(G'gow, Cathcart)


Digby, Simon Wingfield
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Taylor, Frank (Moss Side)


Drayson, G. B.
Longden, Gilbert
Tilney, John


Eden, Sir John
Lubbock, Eric
Turton, Rt. Hn. R. H.


Errington, Sir Eric
MacArthur, Ian
Walker, Peter (Worcester)


Eyre, Reginald
Mackenzie, Alasdair (Ross&amp;Crom'ty)
Weatherill, Bernard


Farr, John
Macleod, Rt. Hn. Iain
Wilson, Geoffrey (Truro)


Fisher, Nigel
Maginnis, John E.
Winstanley, Dr. M. P.


Fletcher-Cooke, Charles
Marten, Neil
Wolrige-Gordon, Patrick


Fortescue, Tim
Maude, Angus
Worsley, Marcus


Foster, Sir John
Maxwell-Hyslop, R. J.
Wylie, N. R.


Gibson-Watt, David
Mills, Peter (Torrington)
Younger, Hn. George


Gilmour, Ian (Norfolk, C.)
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)



Glover, Sir Douglas
More, Jasper
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Glyn, Sir Richard
Morgan, Geraint (Denbigh)
Mr. R. W. Elliott and Mr. Anthony Grant.




NOES


Albu, Austen
Crawshaw, Richard
Forrester, John


Allen, Scholefield
Crossman, Rt. Hn. Richard
Fraser, John (Norwood)


Anderson, Donald
Cullen, Mrs. Alice
Fraser, Rt. Hn. Tom (Hamilton)


Archer, Peter
Dalyell Tam
Freeson, Reginald


Armstrong, Ernest
Davidson, Arthur (Accrington)
Galpern, Sir Myer


Barnett, Joel
Davies, Dr. Ernest (Stratford)
Gardner, Tony


Baxter, William
Davies, G. Elfed (Rhondda, E.)
Garrett, W. E.


Bence, Cyril
Dairies, Ednyfed Hudson (Conway)
Gourlay, Harry


Bennett, James (G'gow, Bridgeton)
Davies, Harold (Leek)
Gray, Dr. Hugh (Yarmouth)


Binns, John
Davies, Ifor (Gower)
Grey, Charles (Durham)


Bishop, E. S.
Dempsey, James
Hamilton, James (Bothwell)


Blackburn, F.
Dewar, Donald
Hamilton, William (Fife, W.)


Blenkinsop, Arthur
Doig, Peter
Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)


Boardman, H.
Dunnett, Jack
Haseldine, Norman


Braddock, Mrs. E. M.
Dunwoody, Mrs. Gwyneth (Exeter)
Hooley, Frank


Bray, Dr. Jeremy
Dunwoody, Dr. John (F'th &amp; C'b'e)
Howarth, Robert (Bolton, E.)


Brooks, Edwin
Eadie, Alex
Howell, Denis (Small Heath)


Brown, Hugh D. (G'gow, Provan)
Ensor, David
Howie, W.


Brown, Bob (N'c'tle-upon-Tyne, W.)
Evans, Albert (Islington, S.W.)
Hoy, James


Buchanan, Richard (G'gow, Sp'burn)
Evans, Ioan L. (Birm'h'm, Yardley)
Hughes, Rt. Hn. Cledwyn (Anglesey)


Butler, Herbert (Hackney, C.)
Faulds, Andrew
Hughes, Roy (Newport)


Butler, Mrs. Joyce (Wood Green)
Fernyhough, E.
Hunter, Adam


Coe, Denis
Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)
Hynd, John


Coleman, Donald
Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)
Jackson, Colin (B'h'se &amp; Spenb'gh)


Concannon, J. D.
Foot, Sir Dingle (Ipswich)
Johnson, Carol (Lewisham, S.)


Craddock, George (Bradford, S.)
Ford, Ben
Jones, Dan (Burnley)




Jones, J. Idwal (Wrexham)
Mitchell, R. C. (S'th'pton, Test)
Silkin, Hn. S. C. (Dulwich)


Judd, Frank
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Slater, Joseph


Kelley, Richard
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Small, William


Kenyon, Clifford
Moyle, Roland
Steele, Thomas (Dunbartonshire, W.)


Kerr, Dr. David (W'worth, Central)
Murray, Albert
Swingler, Stephen


Lawson, George
Noel-Baker, Francis (Swindon)
Taverne, Dick


Leadbitter, Ted
Norwood, Christopher
Thornton, Ernest


Lestor, Miss Joan
Oakes, Gordon
Tinn, James


Lever, Harold (Cheetham)
Ogden, Eric
Urwin, T. W.


Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
O'Malley, Brian
Varley, Eric G.


Lomas, Kenneth
Oswald, Thomas
Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne Valley)


Loughlin, Charles
Owen, Dr. David (Plymouth, S'tn)
Walker, Harold (Doncaster)


Luard, Evan
Owen, Will (Morpeth)
Watkins, David (Consett)


Lyons, Edward (Bradford, E.)
Page, Derek (King's Lynn)
Wellbeloved, James


McCann, John
Palmer, Arthur
Wells, William (Walsall, N.)


MacColl, James
Parker, John (Dagenham)
Whitaker, Ben


Macdonald, A. H.
Parkyn, Brian (Bedford)
White, Mrs. Eirene


McGuire, Michael
Pentland, Norman
Whitlock, William


McKay, Mrs. Margaret
Price, William (Rugby)
Willey, Rt. Hn. Frederick


Mackenzie, Gregor (Rutherglen)
Probert, Arthur
Williams, Alan (Swansea, W.)


Maclennan, Robert
Rhodes, Geoffrey
Williams, Alan Lee (Hornchurch)


McMillan, Tom (Glasgow, C.)
Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Williams, Clifford (Abertillery)


MacPherson, Malcolm
Robertson, John (Paisley)
Williams, Mrs. Shirley (Hitchin)


Mahon, Peter (Preston, S.)
Robinson, W. O. J. (Walth' stow, E.)
Willis, George (Edinburgh, E.)


Mallalieu, J.P.W. (Huddersfield, E.)
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)
Wilson, Rt. Hn. Harold (Huyton)


Manuel, Archie
Rose, Paul
Winterbottom, R. E.


Mapp, Charles
Ross, Rt. Hn. William
Woodburn, Rt. Hn. A.


Marquand, David
Rowland, Christopher (Meriden)
Yates, Victor


Marsh, Rt. Hn. Richard
Rowlands, E. (Cardiff, N.)



Millan, Bruce
Sheldon, Robert



Miller, Dr. M. S.
Short, Mrs. Renée (W'hampton, N.E.)
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Milne, Edward (Blyth)
Silkin, Rt. Hn. John (Deptford)
Mr. Neil McBride and Mr. Alan Fitch.

Orders of the Day — CARAVANS

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. C. Morris.]

11.41 p.m.

Mr. A. H. Macdonald: In calling the attention of the House to the problem of controlling caravans occupied by vagrants, I should point out that I have deliberately used the word vagrants rather than gypsies because, in discussions upon this subject, whenever the word gypsy is used there is always some kind of debate about the distinction between a gypsy and a true gypsy, or between a Romany and a didicoi. I am not indifferent to the distinction, but for my present purpose the distinction is irrelevant. I am simply concerned with people who occupy caravans and move, at irregular intervals, from one place to another.
I shall begin by referring to the circular issued by the Ministry of Housing and Local Government on 14th June, No. 26/66. In many ways, this was a most admirable document. It contained a statistical analysis showing the extent of this problem, and it went on to put forward a constructive remedy, namely that every local authority should endeavour to provide a small permanent site on which these vagrants could find accommodation on the basis that if every

local authority did its little bit it would go some way to solving the national problem. So far so good. But there were one or two weaknesses in the circular, to which I would draw attention.
The circular did not express that note of urgency, which I consider the problem requires. It asked local authorities to submit to the Ministry within six months their ideas and accounts of sites that they could provide. These reports are due about now. But they are still only reports, and even now no local authority is required to do anything. The London Boroughs Asosciation, an admirable body, has only now got round to considering this question. Six days ago it considered a report on this subject from its Works Committee. In passing, I would say that it was a most excellent report, going into the subject in detail, ending with one or two recommendations, including one for legislation on this subject, which I would particularly recommend to the Minister.
The second criticism I have of the circular is that the references to finance were negligible, if not non-existent. The question arises, when considering the provision of these sites, of whether the local authority is to provide financial support or whether the sites are supposed to be self-sustaining. If there is to be a rate contribution, clearly there are implications. On the site at Bromley


which my local authority intends to provide, the economic rent of each patch would be £4 16s., but the rent proposed is only £2 a week. On that basis, there will be a subsidy from the ratepayers amounting annually to £1,600.
My third criticism of the circular is that it refers, correctly and justly, to the deep distress and anxiety suffered by the vagrants, but does not refer to the equal distress and discomfort suffered by ordinary residents and householders when they see these vagrants parking themselves at the end of their gardens and there appears no way in which these people can be moved on.
The fourth and most important criticism I have of the circular is that it does not contain in itself any assurance that the sites provided will be used. This seems important when associated with the question of finance. If the ratepayers are to provide financial assistance they will want to see that their contributions are not wasted. Several ratepayers in Bromley have put this point to me and, as a ratepayer there myself, I can well understand their attitude.
I turn now to the position in Bromley, the authority which contains at any rate half of my constituency. It is the position I know best, and it may be an example of the situations elsewhere. Without going too deeply into history, the immediate problem arose when Bromley Council cleared a site it proposed to redevelop for housing. The vagrants from that site moved on to the Orpington by-pass, and it is regrettable that they suffered a serious tragedy in that a child was killed on that road.
They moved on to the Ramsden estate in the constituency of the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), whom I am glad to see here. I must not trespass into his affairs, but I believe he will agree that constituents like mine suffered a good deal of distress when they found these people invading the estate and parking on the verges. It is not surprising that the town hall was bombarded with letters and telephone calls from residents and ratepayers wondering what could be done about it.
Bromley Council acted promptly and efficiently. It appointed a committee to deal with the problem and gave it powers to act. I want to pay public tribute to

the work of that committee and its chairman, Alderman Smith, because it has dealt with this problem as effectively as it could, given the powers available. I stress that latter phrase because, naturally, one of the first things it did, under the guidance of the town clerk, was to review the powers available. It went as far back as the Police Act, 1848. It examined the Litter Act, 1958, the Road Traffic Act, 1960, and the Town and Country Planning Act, 1962, and found that the powers available to it were meagre. It also studied the Highways Act, 1959, and found there a section which seemed to be just the thing, for it is laid down there that gypsies may be prosecuted for camping upon the highway or upon the highway verge.
A prosecution was brought under this Act and succeeded in the magistrates' court. But then, prompted by the National Council for Civil Liberties, the vagrants appealed and, in the higher court, the conviction was reversed. Although I am rather an admirer of the N.C.C.L., I wonder whether its action on this occasion was entirely wise. Therefore, the vagrants are currently on the verge of the A20 in my constituency. At 5.15 today—the latest information I have—there were 25 caravans and 15 other vehicles parked along the verge. From the point of view of the vagrants, it is an ingenious site. It is exactly and literally on the border between the boroughs of Bromley and Bexley. If they go out of one door of the caravan they are in Bexley; if they go out of the other door they are in Bromley. The A20 is a trunk road, so the Minister of Transport is also interested. It is not easy to determine the responsible authority.
I have referred to what Bromley is doing. I have been in touch with the leader of the majority party on the Bexley Council and the Ministry of Transport. I gratefully acknowledge the attention being paid to this problem. Bexley is tackling the problem, although it is not as far advanced as Bromley. I acknowledge all that has been done and the correspondence I have had with my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary. But it remains the fact that these people are still on the A20. The householders and residents round about watch with mounting astonishment and dismay to see


that they are still there and that, apparently, nothing can be done.
There is no water or proper sanitation on the site. There is a very real risk of fire, not only to the caravans but to the factories apposite. I am advised that a fire appliance had to be called out the other day. There is also the road traffic hazard.
Bromley has provided a temporary site within the borough. When it was first provided it was occupied by 30 of these people. According to the last count, it is now occupied by only four. Am I being cynical if I associate that diminution in numbers with the fact that rent is charged on the temporary site, whereas no rent is charged on the verge of the A20? This is why I ask for an assurance that the permanent sites, when provided, will be used?
I liken this to the problem of car parks. It is unreasonable to persecute motorists for parking on the highway when no public parking space is available. But when public car parking space is provided it is reasonable to require motorists to use it. That is why I ask for an assurance that the sites will be used.
I should like an assurance that there will be provision made on the sites to deal with the problem of litter. It is maddening to see caravans with mountains of scrap and litter behind them knowing how it got there but knowing that to prove it is quite another thing, which is necessary in order to bring home responsibility to an individual. When the sites are provided is it not possible to establish a collective responsibility for the decent maintenance of the sites?
May I digress briefly. Bromley seeks to provide a permanent site, and this is to be on land owned by the G.L.C. Negotiations have been going on for six months, but the G.L.C. is seeking to impose conditions; in particular, a condition that the lease shall be subject to six months' notice. This hardly seems reasonable when the total expenditure by the ratepayers is to be £13,070. My hon. Friend has previously offered to mediate between the two authorities, and I appeal to him to consider whether it would be helpful for him to take a hand in bringing the two authorities together.
I do not want it to appear that I am in favour of persecuting these vagrants,

although it is true that it is the distress and annoyance to householders which looms largest in my mind. I do not want to appear to be a persecutor. I warmly welcome the circular issued by the Ministry. Seven days after it was issued, I put down a Question asking whether local authorities had adequate power to control the sites. The reply assured me that they had. I confess that I was not entirely convinced. I am still of the opinion that the existing regulations are hardly adequate to make a success of this desirable enterprise.
It is often argued that the vagrants should be free to choose their own way of life, as other people are free to choose theirs. With that sentiment I have no disagreement, but I would add two provisos. First, their way of life should be such that it does not interfere with the right of others to lead their lives in the way they choose. That condition is not fulfilled by the site now upon the A20. Secondly, their way of life should be such that they pay their due contribution towards the public expenses of the community and the maintenance of the public services. Again, this proviso is not fulfilled by the site on the A20. I cannot find that people when they are there are paying any form of rent or rates.
This problem can be solved, because not a quarter of a mile from this site on the A20 there is a little caravan site occupied by vagrants. It is not much to look at, but the people who are there have been integrated and are fully accepted by the community. So this is something which can be done, provided that there is good will on both sides and provided that the proper regulations are imposed at the outset.
I conclude by urging as strongly as I can upon my hon. Friend that this problem, at least in my own constituency, needs urgent consideration. I ask him to consider the implications, both legal and financial, of the otherwise admirable circular that his Ministry issued in June.

11.56 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. James MacColl): My hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Macdonald) has very properly raised this matter, which I know has caused him and


his constituents great concern. I can understand his desire to have it discussed. I welcome the opportunity of saying a few words about it.
There is no doubt that the Borough of Bromley has tried, and has incurred some unpopularity with its ratepayers as a result of trying, to do something about this difficult problem. I pay tribute to the borough's efforts. My hon. Friend said that he thought that our circular was a very good one. I appreciate that, and I am glad that he said it. He said, however, that it lacked a note of urgency. The difficulty is that in this complicated question, where much thought is required as to what is to be done, to rush the local authorities for the sake of getting quick answers would not have been wise. It would have been nice to have had a sort of superficial speed about it and to have Rot a certain amount of information, but the danger is that we might have gone off at half cock.
If we are to do any good, we must have a very thorough assessment of the situation. We need to know how widespread the problem is. We need to get the collective wisdom and experience of the local authorities in deciding how best to deal with it. Therefore, I do not apologise for the fact that we have spent six months in waiting for answers to the circular.
The answers are due this month. So far 20 authorities have sent in answers. On the whole, most of those 20 authorities have not got a serious problem. But one would imagine that the authorities which answer most quickly are those which are likely not to have a big problem and therefore they do not have to do a lot of work on it. There are some more answers to come in. As soon as they arrive, we shall certainly study them.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: Has the Ministry yet received a reply from the Kent County Council?

Mr. MacColl: I cannot say without notice. I am not sure about Kent. I intended to go on and mention the Greater London Council, which is what my hon. Friend was dealing with. The position there is that they were excluded from the normal procedures in the circular, but they have set up a working party. I was glad to hear from my hon. Friend that the London Boroughs Committee had

approved a report, and I have no doubt that we shall get a copy of it. I was also glad to hear that it was a very good and thorough report. It should be very helpful.
First, we have to decide what the problem is. That is not always easy, because on this subject there is so much emotion and passion on both sides. We have to decide how widespread the problem is, and what is required. We then have to encourage the supply of more and more sites of the right kind for use by the vagrants. That is an important point. If I may say so, I do not see much use in regarding vagrants as though they were large numbers of irresponsible people who have to be provided with a considerable amount of welfare services. As my hon. Friend has said, these people know whether they are going. They are fairly shrewd, and many of them show all the external signs of prosperity.
One has to concede, too, that they are performing a valuable function, because until local authorities, either as a result of the encouragement of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Streatham (Mr. Sandys), or of their own volition, decide to do something about scrap, and particularly automobile scrap, the vagrants will be doing something that someone has to do. One therefore has to look at the matter from the point of view of what kind of provision is best to enable them to live the kind of life they want to live, without their getting too much on the nerves of their neighbours. That calls for mutual tolerance on both sides.
To my hon. Friend's rebuke that the circular showed too much sympathy with the vagrants and too little with the ordinary respectable public, the answer is that in writing to local authorities the important thing is to get them to do something. They get the other side of the picture put fairly forcefully by their own councillors and ratepayers; it must be got across to them that something must also be done for these people. If we do not act, someone suffers. If some authorities do a lot and others do nothing it is unfair on the former.
Having got an idea of the right strategy to adopt and the right kind of provision to make, we have to consider how it can be made effective. That, I concede, will


probably call for legislation on quite a number of matters. My hon. Friend asked whether it would be possible under existing legislation to provide a specific grant for this purpose, and we shall have to look at that point.
Having provided the wherewithal, it is important, using my hon. Friend's own analogy that in order to succeed in getting cards off the road we have to provide parking places, in the same way, if we are to succeed in getting the vagrants off the roads and public places, we have to provide adequate other facilities. Then we can begin to enforce the law effectively. Merely to start at this stage by being severe with the vagrants and harrying them with prosecutions will not do any good unless there is some alternative site for them. It will merely scatter them and spread the problem.
Therefore, the second stage is to have the right kind of facilities available and accessible, and then to look at how we can get those facilities used. I am afraid that I can give my hon. Friend no assurance that they will be used—that would be beyond any Government Department to ensure. We can only seek to encourage their use, and encourage local authorities to get them used.

Mr. Macdonald: I quite appreciate that one cannot ensure that they are used, but as he is contemplating legislation, would he contemplate legislation to discourage parking somewhere else when the sites have been provided?

Mr. MacColl: I was coming to that point. Having got the sites, which one is confident are the right sites, one can then look at the sanctions to secure their use.
When my hon. Friend mentioned some of the provisions that are being used and their weaknesses, he did not mention the point that was discussed together with Bromley, when he came to see me, and that is, the use of byelaws under the Local Government Act. Our view is that those byelaws would be worth a try. We said that at the time, but I gather that nothing more has been done about it. I quite accept that it is not much use doing this until there are adequate provision of sites, which brings me to the point about the particular site to which my hon. Friend referred.
I am sorry to hear that it has been impossible for these two authorities—the Bromley Borough Council and the Greater London Council—to come to some agreement about the use of the site. We made is clear in our discussions as my hon. Friend knows, that we thought it was a good idea that the site should be used. I will have a look at that to see if there is anything more that we can do in the matter.
My hon. Friend raises this matter at an interesting time, because we are about to receive the report from the London Boroughs Committee and the results of the circular. It is interesting to have a discussion about it preparatory to that. I must, however, make the point that it is too early for us to make an assessment of the problem and to get the collective wisdom of the authorities on what they think could be done. My right hon. Friend has an open mind on the matter. He is not shutting his mind to the possibility of legislation, if that can be managed. Perhaps the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Lubbock), who is such a master at Private Members' Bills, might think that this is worthy of his skill. However, it is no use having legislation for the sake of giving the impression that we are doing something, when in fact we are not really tackling the problem. The important thing is to answer the questions: how big is the problem, where is it, and what kind of facilities are required?

12.9 a.m.

Mr. Eric Lubbock: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he approached the problem which both the hon. Member for Chislehurst (Mr. Macdonald) and I have in common. When the gypsies first came to our area they settled mainly in his constituency, but nowadays large numbers of them have come over the border and are now living in Orpington. I have not seen the site on the A20 to which he referred, but I am sure he is well aware that we have a large number of itinerants—I think the word "vagrant" has a rather opprobrious overtone—living on the borders of the A21 just beyond Green Street Green in my constituency.
Whatever one may say about this matter, it excites the passions and the frenzy of permanent residents in the neighbourhood. The mess created by


the activities of the people who live in these caravans does create a problem, however great the social value they may have. I admit there was something in what the Parliamentary Secretary said, that, so long as local authorities are not undertaking this work, the residents in the caravans are performing a valuable social function, but I would like him to put that to the people who live along the A21 and see what sort of reaction he gets. I invite him to come down to the London Borough of Bromley, if he has not already done so. He could quite easily, within a short space of time, tour the site on the A20 to which the hon. Gentleman the Member for Chislehurst referred and also the other one which most interests me in my constituency beyond Green Street Green.
This problem has been troubling us for some time. As the hon. Gentleman said, one had, first of all, a settlement on the Ramsden estate. They moved away from there, and, finally, a number have settled on the site which I have mentioned. In the intermediate period, they were also at Pratts Bottom, adjacent to a small village, where they cause quite a lot of nuisance.
I hope that the Minister will agree that, as the outer fringes of Greater London become more and more built up, it is less and less possible for caravans occupied by itinerants to be placed in the interstices between the built-up areas without some kind of impingement on the permanent population, and we should, therefore, be thinking of sites provided much further out. This is why I intervened and asked whether the hon. Gentleman had yet had a reply from the Kent County Council. It is my impression that very little is being done in the rural areas of Kent, and we in the London Borough of Bromley are bearing far more than our fair share of the burden in South-East England as a whole. The London Borough of Bromley has made at least some attempt to tackle this problem, and——

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Tuesday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twelve minutes past Twelve o'clock.